area handbook series 

Soviet Union 

a country study 



Soviet Union 

a country study 

Federal Research Division 
Library of Congress 
Edited by 
Raymond E. Zickel 
Research Completed 
May 1989 



On the cover: Spasskaia (Savior) Tower and the Kremlin Wall 
with St. Basil Cathedral on the right and the Council of 
Ministers building in the background 



Second Edition, First Printing, 1991. 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 

Soviet Union : a country study / Federal Research Division, Library 
of Congress ; edited by Raymond E. Zickel. — 2nd ed. 

p. cm. — (Area handbook series, ISSN 1057-5294) 
(DA pam ; 550-95) 

' ' Supersedes the 1971 edition of Area handbook for the Soviet 
Union written by Eugene K. Keefe, et al." — T.p. verso. 
4 'Research completed May 1989." 

Includes bibliographical references (pp. 895-977) and index. 
ISBN 0-8444-0727-5 

1. Soviet Union. I. Zickel, Raymond E., 1934- . II. Library 
of Congress. Federal Research Division. III. Area handbook for 
the Soviet Union. IV. Series. V. Series: DA pam ; 550-95. 
DK17.S6396 1991 90-25756 
947— dc20 CIP 



Headquarters, Department of the Army 
DA Pam 550-95 



For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office 
Washington, D.C. 20402 



Foreword 



This volume is one in a continuing series of books prepared by 
the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress under 
the Country Studies — Area Handbook Program sponsored by the 
Department of the Army. The last page of this book lists the other 
published studies. 

Most books in the series deal with a particular foreign country, 
describing and analyzing its political, economic, social, and national 
security systems and institutions, and examining the interrelation- 
ships of those systems and the ways they are shaped by cultural 
factors. Each study is written by a multidisciplinary team of social 
scientists. The authors seek to provide a basic understanding of 
the observed society, striving for a dynamic rather than a static 
portrayal. Particular attention is devoted to the people who make 
up the society, their origins, dominant beliefs and values, their com- 
mon interests and the issues on which they are divided, the nature 
and extent of their involvement with national institutions, and their 
attitudes toward each other and toward their social system and 
political order. 

The books represent the analysis of the authors and should not 
be construed as an expression of an official United States govern- 
ment position, policy, or decision. The authors have sought to 
adhere to accepted standards of scholarly objectivity. Corrections, 
additions, and suggestions for changes from readers will be wel- 
comed for use in future editions. 

Louis R. Mortimer 
Chief 

Federal Research Division 
Library of Congress 
Washington, D.C. 20540 



iii 



Acknowledgments 



The authors wish to acknowledge the contributions that numer- 
ous persons made to the preparation of Soviet Union: A Country Study. 
Many past and present members of the Federal Research Division 
contributed to the preparation of the manuscript. Richard F. Nyrop 
furnished expert guidance on the composition and writing of the 
book and reviewed drafts of all the chapters. Sandra W. Meditz 
reviewed portions of the text and graphics and served as liaison with 
Ralph K. Benesch, who oversees the Country Studies — Area Hand- 
book Program for the Department of the Army. Stephen R. Burant 
deserves special thanks because, after writing one chapter and 
coauthoring another, he provided substantive editing and rewrit- 
ing of several other chapters. Special thanks are also due Helen R. 
Fedor, who reviewed bibliographies, regularized spellings, and pre- 
pared the Glossary, which was initially compiled by Pamela J. Perry 
and subsequently added to by Ihor Y. Gawdiak and Walter R. 
Iwaskiw. Ihor Y. Gawdiak revised Appendix C and, together with 
Glenn E. Curtis, revised Appendix B. Walter R. Iwaskiw prepared 
the map drafts with expert guidance from Carolina E. Forrester and 
Susan M. Lender and coordinated the subsequent work on the maps. 
The late Anthony S. Beliajeff prepared the Chronology. Sara C. 
Arason compiled the charts and tables from the authors' data and 
provided other assistance. Carol A. Corrigan and Rosette Konick 
helped select and organize the photographs and wrote captions for 
many of them and for the illustrations. Elizabeth A. Yates typed 
some of the chapters from handwritten manuscripts and assisted in 
many other details deserving of special thanks. Invaluable graphics 
support was provided by David P. Cabitto, who also prepared the 
final maps. He was assisted by Sandra K. Ferrell and Kimberly A. 
Lord; the latter artist drew the cover and chapter illustrations for 
the book. Helen C. Metz helped write the description of Islam con- 
tained in Chapter 4, and Stanley M. Sciora furnished detailed in- 
formation on the uniforms and rank insignia of the Soviet armed 
forces. Finally, special thanks are given to Martha E. Hopkins and 
Marilyn L. Majeska, who managed the book's editing, and to 
Andrea T. Merrill, who managed production. 

The following individuals are gratefully acknowledged as well: 
Mimi Cantwell, Sharon Costello, Barbara Dash, Deanna D'Errico, 
Vince Ercolano, Barbara Harrison, Martha E. Hopkins, Patricia 
Molella, Ruth Nieland, Evan Raynes, Gage Ricard, Sharon 
Schultz, and Mary Wild for editing the chapters; Beverly Wolpert 



for editing the Bibliography; Barbara Edgerton and Izella Watson 
for word processing; Angela L. Eveges for typing the Introduc- 
tion; Andrea T. Merrill for performing the final prepublica- 
tion editorial review; Joan C. Cook for preparing the index; and 
Malinda B. Neale of the Printing and Processing Section, Library 
of Congress, for phototypesetting, under the direction of Peggy 
Pixley. 

The authors also wish to note the significant contributions of per- 
sons not on the staff of the Federal Research Division. Jimmy 
Pritchard furnished the vast majority of the photographs used in 
this volume, including some taken expressly for the study. David 
M. Goldfrank wrote the portion of Chapter 1 that deals with Rus- 
sian history from 1855 to 1917 and reviewed all of Chapter 1 and 
Chapter 2 . Paul Goble provided commentary on Soviet nationali- 
ties, and Graham Vernon reviewed Chapter 17 and Chapter 18. 



vi 



Contents 



Page 

Foreword iii 

Acknowledgments v 

Preface xxiii 

Country Profile xiv 

Introduction lvii 

Chapter 1. Historical Setting: Early History 

to 1917 l 

Zenon E. Kohut and David M. Goldfrank 

EMERGENCE OF THE EAST SLAVS 4 

The Peoples of the East European Plain 5 

The East Slavs and the Varangians 5 

The Golden Age of Kiev 6 

The Rise of Regional Centers 8 

The Mongol Invasion 9 

MUSCOVY 10 

The Rise of Muscovy 12 

The Evolution of Russian Autocracy 12 

Ivan IV 13 

The Time of Troubles 14 

The Romanovs 15 

Expansion and Westernization 18 

EARLY IMPERIAL RUSSIA 19 

Peter the Great and the Formation of the Russian 

Empire 20 

Era of Palace Revolutions 22 

Imperial Expansion and Maturation: 

Catherine II 24 

RULING THE EMPIRE 27 

War and Peace, 1796-1825 27 

Period of Reaction: Nicholas I, 1825-55 30 

THE TRANSFORMATION OF IMPERIAL RUSSIA 32 

Economic Developments 33 

Reforms and Their Limits, 1855-92 33 

Foreign Affairs after the Crimean War, 1856-93 .... 36 

The Age of Realism in Literature 38 



vii 



The Rise of Revolutionary Populism and 

Russian Marxism, 1855-90 40 

Serge Witte and Accelerated Industrialization, 

1891- 1903 41 

The Development of Radical Political Parties, 

1892- 1904 42 

Imperialism in Asia and the Russo-Japanese 

War, 1894-1905 44 

THE LAST YEARS OF TSARDOM 45 

The Revolution of 1905 and Counterrevolution, 

1905-07 45 

The Tenuous Regimes of Stolypin and Kokovstev, 

1907-14 46 

The Return to an Active Balkan Policy, 1906-13 48 

Russia at War, 1914-16 49 

The Strains of the War Effort and the Weakening 

of Tsarism 50 

Chapter 2. Historical Setting: 1917 to 1982 53 

Thomas Skallerup 

REVOLUTIONS AND CIVIL WAR 56 

The February Revolution 56 

The Period of Dual Power 57 

The Bolshevik Revolution 59 

Civil War and War Communism 61 

THE ERA OF THE NEW ECONOMIC POLICY 64 

Lenin's Leadership 64 

Stalin's Rise to Power 66 

Foreign Policy, 1921-28 66 

Society and Culture in the 1920s 67 

TRANSFORMATION AND TERROR 68 

Industrialization and Collectivization 68 

The Period of the Purges 70 

Mobilization of Society 71 

Foreign Policy, 1928-39 72 

WAR YEARS 73 

Prelude to War 73 

The Great Patriotic War 74 

RECONSTRUCTION AND COLD WAR 77 

Reconstruction Years 77 

The Cold War 78 

Death of Stalin 81 

THE KHRUSHCHEV ERA 82 

Collective Leadership and the Rise of Khrushchev ... 82 

Foreign Policy under Khrushchev 85 



vm 



Khrushchev's Reforms and Fall 87 

THE BREZHNEV ERA 88 

Collective Leadership and the Rise of Brezhnev 88 

Foreign Policy of a Superpower 90 

The Economy 92 

Culture and the Arts 93 

Death of Brezhnev 94 

Chapter 3. Physical Environment and 

Population 97 

David E. McClave 

PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT 100 

Global Position and Boundaries 101 

Administrative-Political-Territorial Divisions 102 

Topography and Drainage 104 

Climate 109 

Natural Resources 112 

Environmental Concerns 113 

POPULATION 115 

Vital Statistics 116 

Age and Sex Structure 119 

Mortality and Fertility 120 

Urbanization 121 

Migration 122 

Distribution and Density 124 

Marriage, Divorce, and the Family 125 

Population Problems and Policies 127 

Chapter 4. Nationalities and Religions 133 

Ihor Y. Gawdiak 

NATIONALITIES OF THE SOVIET UNION 137 

Slavic Nationalities 138 

Baltic Nationalities 146 

Nationalities of the Caucasus 152 

Central Asian Nationalities 159 

Other Major Nationalities 173 

RELIGIOUS GROUPS IN THE SOVIET UNION 184 

Orthodox 184 

Armenian Apostolic 189 

Catholic 189 

Protestant 191 

Muslim 191 

POLICY TOWARD NATIONALITIES AND RELIGIONS 

IN PRACTICE 195 



ix 



MANIFESTATIONS OF NATIONAL 

ASSERTIVENESS 201 

Baltic Nationalities 201 

Armenians 202 

Ukrainians 202 

Central Asian Nationalities 204 

Russians 205 

Other Nationalities 205 

Chapter 5. Social Structure 209 

Kenneth E. Nyirady 

FORMATION OF SOVIET SOCIETY 212 

STRATIFICATION OF SOVIET SOCIETY 215 

Socio-Occupational Groupings 216 

Other Determinants of Social Position 217 

Benefits of Social Position 219 

Urban-Rural Cleavage 224 

SOCIAL MOBILITY 227 

SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS 228 

Trade Unions 228 

Youth Organizations 229 

Sports Organizations 230 

GENDER AND FAMILY ROLES 230 

Role of Women 230 

Male-Female Relationships 231 

The Soviet Family 234 

Chapter 6. Education, Health, and Welfare 241 

Irene M. Steckler 

EDUCATION 244 

Philosophy and Aims 245 

Control and Administration 247 

Pedagogy and Planning 248 

Institutions of Learning 250 

Quality, Reform, and Funding 261 

HEALTH CARE 262 

Provision of Medical Care 263 

Declining Health Care in the 1970s and 1980s 269 

WELFARE 274 

Pension System 274 

Workers' Compensation 276 

Other Assistance 276 



x 



Chapter 7. The Communist Party 279 

Stephen R. Burant 

LENIN'S CONCEPTION OF THE PARTY 282 

Theoretical Underpinnings 283 

Democratic Centralism 284 

PARTY LEGITIMACY 288 

CENTRAL PARTY INSTITUTIONS 292 

Party Congress 293 

Party Conference 295 

Central Committee 296 

Central Auditing Commission 298 

Party Control Committee 298 

Politburo 298 

Secretariat 300 

Commissions 301 

General Secretary: Power and Authority 302 

INTERMEDIATE-LEVEL PARTY ORGANIZATIONS 306 

Republic Party Organization 306 

Oblast-Level Organization 308 

District- and City-Level Organization 310 

PRIMARY PARTY ORGANIZATION 312 

NOMENKLATURA 313 

The Party's Appointment Authority 314 

Patron-Client Relations 315 

PARTY MEMBERSHIP 316 

Selection Procedures 317 

Training 320 

SOCIAL COMPOSITION OF THE PARTY 322 

Chapter 8. Government Structure and 

Functions 327 

Barry A. Zulauf, Stephen R. Burant, 
and James P. Nichol 

CONSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY OF 

GOVERNMENT 331 

Early Soviet Constitutions 332 

The 1977 Constitution 333 

CENTRAL GOVERNMENT 340 

Administrative Organs 341 

Congress of People's Deputies 346 

Supreme Soviet 350 

Control Organs 358 



XI 



TERRITORIAL ADMINISTRATION , 361 

Republic Level 362 

Provincial and District Levels 364 

ELECTIONS 365 

Chapter 9. Mass Media and the Arts 367 

Joshua Spew 

POLITICIZATION OF THE MASS MEDIA AND 

THE ARTS 370 

Leninist Principles 371 

Socialist Realism 372 

ADMINISTRATION OF THE MASS MEDIA AND 

THE ARTS 373 

The Party Role 373 

The Government Role 374 

THE MASS MEDIA 377 

Newspapers 377 

Magazines and Journals 381 

Radio 382 

Television and Video Cassette Recorders 382 

Computers 384 

THE ARTS 385 

Literature 388 

Cinema . . 390 

Theater 393 

Music 394 

Painting, Sculpture, and the Graphic Arts 396 

Chapter 10. Foreign Policy 399 

James P. Nichol 

IDEOLOGY AND OBJECTIVES 401 

FOREIGN POLICY MAKING AND EXECUTION 403 

The Foreign Policy Makers , . 403 

Departments of the Central Committee 404 

Higher State and Government Organizations 407 

The Congress of People's Deputies and the 

Supreme Soviet 408 

The Council of Ministers and Its Presidium 408 

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs 409 

INSTRUMENTS OF INFLUENCE 410 

Diplomatic Relations 410 

Party and State Visits Abroad 413 

Friendship and Cooperation Treaties 413 

Communist Parties Abroad 414 



xii 



SOVIET-UNITED STATES RELATIONS 415 

SOVIET-WEST EUROPEAN RELATIONS 419 

France 420 

West Germany 420 

Britain 421 

Spain and Portugal 422 

Scandinavia 422 

SOVIET-EAST EUROPEAN RELATIONS 423 

SINO-SOVIET RELATIONS 426 

SOVIET-JAPANESE RELATIONS 427 

THE SOVIET UNION AND THE THIRD WORLD 428 

Middle East and North Africa 430 

Asia 433 

Sub-Saharan Africa 438 

Central America and South America 440 

THE SOVIET UNION AND NUCLEAR ARMS 

CONTROL 442 

THE SOVIET UNION AND THE UNITED NATIONS 445 

Chapter 11. Economic Structure and Policy 449 

Becky Gates 

ECONOMIC STRUCTURE 452 

Nature of the National Economy 452 

Labor 454 

Retail and Wholesale Distribution System 456 

Financial System 457 

ECONOMIC PLANNING AND CONTROL 458 

Planning Process 458 

Reforming the Planning System 465 

Tools of Control 469 

ECONOMIC POLICY 471 

Past Priorities 472 

The Twelfth Five-Year Plan, 1986-90 478 

Chapter 12. Industry 483 

Glenn E. Curtis 

DEVELOPMENT OF SOVIET INDUSTRY 486 

INDUSTRIAL RESOURCES 487 

Raw Materials 487 

Geographic Location Factors 488 

The Territorial Production Complexes and 

Geographic Expansion 488 

The Labor Force and Perestroika 490 

INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION 491 

The Complexes and the Ministries 491 



The Industrial Planning System 492 

Structural Reform of Industry 492 

The Military-Industrial Complex 493 

Industrial Research and Design 494 

MACHINE BUILDING AND METAL WORKING 495 

The Structure and Status of the Machine-Building 

and Metal-Working Complex 495 

The Planning and Investment Process of the 

Machine-Building and Metal-Working Complex . . . 496 

The Location of the Machine-Building Industry 497 

The Automotive Industry 497 

The Electronics Industry 499 

METALLURGY 499 

Role of Metallurgy 500 

Metallurgy Planning and Problems 500 

Metallurgical Combine Locations and Major 

Producers 501 

Nonferrous Metals 501 

CHEMICALS 502 

Plastics 502 

Petrochemicals 502 

Other Branches of the Chemical Industry 503 

Chemical Planning Goals 503 

FUELS 505 

Fuel Resource Base 505 

Oil 505 

Natural Gas 507 

Coal 508 

Uranium 510 

POWER ENGINEERING 510 

Energy Planning Goals 510 

The Balance among Energy Sources 511 

Obstacles to Power Supply 512 

Heat and Cogeneration 512 

THE CONSUMER INDUSTRY 512 

Consumer Supply in the 1980s 513 

The Logic and Goals of Consumer Production 514 

Textiles and Wood Pulp 514 

Chapter 13. Agriculture 517 

Ronald D. Bachman 

POLICY AND ADMINISTRATION 520 

Stalin's Legacy 520 

Evolution of an Integrated Food Policy 522 

LAND USE 525 



xiv 



PRODUCTION 529 

Grain , 530 

Technical Crops 532 

Forage Crops 533 

Potatoes and Vegetables 533 

Other Crops 534 

Animal Husbandry 536 

Forestry 538 

Fishing 539 

The Twelfth Five-Year Plan, 1986-90 540 

Chapter 14. Transportation and 

Communications 543 

Boris Hlynsky 

RAILROADS 546 

Historical Background, 1913-39 546 

World War II 550 

The Postwar Period, 1946-60 552 

Organization and Equipment of the Railroads 554 

Passenger Operations 556 

The Baykal-Amur Main Line 557 

Other New Construction 558 

Metropolitan Railways 561 

AUTOMOTIVE TRANSPORT 561 

Development of Automotive Transport 561 

Freight Transportation by Trucks 565 

Passenger Transportation 565 

INLAND WATERWAYS 566 

Development of Waterways 566 

The Waterway System 567 

River Ports and Facilities 569 

Passenger Transportation 570 

MERCHANT MARINE 570 

Initial Developments 571 

Fleet Operations 572 

CIVIL AVIATION 576 

Postwar Evolution of Aeroflot 579 

Aeroflot Operations 579 

PIPELINES 580 

COMMUNICATIONS 582 

Chapter 15. Foreign Trade 589 

Malinda K. Goodrich 

DEVELOPMENT OF THE STATE MONOPOLY ON 

FOREIGN TRADE 593 

xv 



STRUCTURE OF THE FOREIGN TRADE 

BUREAUCRACY 594 

Administration 594 

Operation 595 

Structural Reforms, 1986 to Mid-1988 597 

TRADE WITH SOCIALIST COUNTRIES 601 

The Council for Mutual Economic 

Assistance 601 

Yugoslavia 603 

China 604 

Cambodia, Laos, and North Korea 605 

TRADE WITH WESTERN INDUSTRIALIZED 

COUNTRIES 605 

The United States 607 

Western Europe 609 

Japan 610 

Finland 611 

TRADE WITH THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES 612 

Balance of Trade 612 

Composition of Trade 613 

Africa, Asia, and Latin America 615 

Countries of Socialist Orientation 616 

Trade with the Organization of Petroleum 

Exporting Countries 616 

GORBACHEV'S ECONOMIC REFORMS 618 

Chapter 16. Science and Technology 621 

Cathleen A. Campbell 

EARLY DEVELOPMENT 624 

THE ADMINISTRATION OF SCIENCE AND 

TECHNOLOGY 628 

Policy Making 628 

Planning 629 

Financing 632 

SCIENCE AND IDEOLOGY 633 

RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT, AND PRODUCTION 

ORGANIZATIONS 634 

SOVIET INNOVATION: PROBLEMS AND 

SOLUTIONS 637 

TECHNOLOGY AND INFORMATION 

TRANSFER 642 

MILITARY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT 646 

TRAINING 648 



xvi 



Chapter 17. Military Doctrine and Strategic 
Concerns 65 1 

Eugenia V. Osgood 

MARXIST-LENINIST THEORY OF WAR 654 

War as a Continuation of Politics 655 

Laws of War 657 

THE PARTY AND MILITARY DOCTRINE AND 

POLICY 659 

Evolution of Military Doctrine 660 

Military Doctrine in the Late 1980s 662 

Doctrine and Weapons Programs 664 

Military Policy of the Communist Party of the 

Soviet Union 665 

MILITARY SCIENCE 666 

Laws of Armed Conflict 668 

Principles of Military Art 668 

Military Art 668 

STRATEGIC MISSIONS OF THE ARMED FORCES 675 

Threat Assessments and Force Requirements 676 

Offensive and Defensive Strategic Missions 676 

GLOBAL STRATEGIC CONCERNS 681 

Force Projection on the Periphery 682 

Military Presence in the Third World 684 

ARMS CONTROL AND MILITARY OBJECTIVES 685 

Strategic Arms Control 686 

Objectives in Space 688 

Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Arms 

Control , 689 

Conventional Arms Control 691 

Chapter 18. Armed Forces and Defense 
Organization 695 

Karl Wheeler Soper 

ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND 

COMBAT EXPERIENCE 697 

STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP OF THE ARMED 

FORCES 700 

Defense Council 700 

Main Military Council 701 

Ministry of Defense 701 

General Staff 702 

THE ARMED SERVICES 703 

Strategic Rocket Forces 703 



Ground Forces 705 

Air Forces 710 

Air Defense Forces 712 

Naval Forces 716 

Airborne Troops and Special Purpose Troops 719 

Rear Services 720 

Civil Defense 720 

Specialized and Paramilitary Forces 722 

TERRITORIAL ORGANIZATION OF THE ARMED 

FORCES 723 

Military Districts 725 

Fleets, Flotillas, and Squadrons 727 

Groups of Forces Stationed Abroad 728 

THE PARTY AND THE ARMED FORCES 728 

Political-Military Relations 729 

Military Representation in the Party 729 

Party Control in the Armed Forces 730 

MILITARY ECONOMICS 733 

Defense Spending 733 

Military Industries and Production 734 

Military Technology 735 

UNIFORMS AND RANK INSIGNIA 737 

MILITARY MANPOWER 739 

Premilitary Training 739 

Conscripts 742 

Officers 748 

Reserves and Wartime Mobilization 750 

Chapter 19. Internal Security 753 

Amy W. Knight 

PREDECESSORS OF THE COMMITTEE FOR STATE 
SECURITY AND THE MINISTRY OF INTERNAL 

AFFAIRS 756 

The Tsarist Period 756 

Soviet Predecessor Organizations, 1917-54 757 

THE SECURITY APPARATUS AND KREMLIN 

POLITICS 760 

Khrushchev Period 760 

After Khrushchev 762 

Gorbachev Era 763 

ORGANIZATION OF THE COMMITTEE FOR 

STATE SECURITY 765 

Structure 765 

Functions and Internal Organization 766 



xvin 



Party Control 769 

Personnel 770 

DOMESTIC SECURITY AND THE COMMITTEE 

FOR STATE SECURITY 771 

Legal Prerogatives 771 

Policy 772 

Special Departments in the Armed Forces 775 

THE FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE ROLE OF THE 

COMMITTEE FOR STATE SECURITY 776 

Organization 776 

Intelligence and Counterintelligence 778 

Active Measures 779 

Influence on Foreign Policy 780 

THE MINISTRY OF INTERNAL AFFAIRS 781 

Functions and Organization 782 

Leadership 783 

Control by the Party 785 

THE MINISTRY OF INTERNAL AFFAIRS, THE 

JUDICIAL ORGANS, AND NONPOLITICAL CRIME . . 786 

Socialist Legality 786 

The Procuracy 787 

Military Justice 787 

The Judiciary and the Legal Profession 787 

Legal Codes and Abuses of the System 788 

Nonpolitical Crime and Punishment 790 

INTERNAL SECURITY TROOPS 790 

Border Troops of the Committee for State 

Security 791 

Security Troops of the Committee for State 

Security 793 

Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal 

Affairs 793 

Appendix A. Tables 797 

Appendix B. The Council for Mutual 

Economic Assistance 853 

Malinda K. Goodrich 

MEMBERSHIP, STRUCTURE, NATURE, AND 

SCOPE 854 

Membership 854 

Structure 856 

Nature of Operation 858 



EVOLUTION 858 

Early Years 858 

Rediscovery of Comecon after Stalin's Death 859 

Rapid Growth in Comecon Activity, 1956-63 860 

Inactivity and Subsequent Revitalization in the 

Late 1960s 861 

The 1971 Comprehensive Program 861 

The 1980s 862 

COOPERATION UNDER THE 1971 COMPREHENSIVE 

PROGRAM 863 

Market Relations and Instruments 864 

Cooperation in Planning 866 

POWER CONFIGURATIONS WITHIN COMECON 870 

The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe 870 

Mongolia, Cuba, and Vietnam 871 

Support for Developing Countries 872 

TRENDS AND PROSPECTS 872 

Appendix C. The Warsaw Pact 875 

Karl Wheeler Soper 

THE SOVIET ALLIANCE SYSTEM, 1943-55 875 

THE FORMATION OF THE WARSAW PACT, 

1955-70 878 

The Polish October 880 

The Hungarian Revolution 880 

A Shift Toward Greater Cohesion 881 

The Prague Spring 882 

ORGANIZATION AND STRATEGY OF THE 

WARSAW PACT 884 

Political Organization 884 

Military Organization 885 

Soviet Military Strategy and the Warsaw Pact 887 

THE WEAKENING OF THE ALLIANCE'S COHESION, 

1970-85 888 

Detente 888 

The End of Detente 891 

THE RENEWAL OF THE ALLIANCE, 1985-89 892 

Bibliography 895 

Glossary 979 

Index 1009 

List of Figures 

1 Administrative Divisions of the Soviet Union, 1989 lvi 

2 The Principalities of Kievan Rus', 1136 6 



xx 



3 Territorial Expansion of Muscovy and the Russian Empire, 



1550-1917 16 

4 Red Army Line, March 1920 62 

5 Military Operations Against Germany, 1941-45 76 

6 Topography and Drainage 106 

7 Major Mineral Deposits 114 

8 Population Distribution by Age and Sex, 1987 120 

9 Population Density, 1981 126 

10 Nationalities and Nationality Groups, 1987 136 

11 Structure of the Education System, 1987 252 

12 Organization of the Communist Party of the Soviet 

Union, 1988 294 

13 Central Apparatus of the Communist Party of the 

Soviet Union, 1988 302 

14 Soviet Foreign Relations Worldwide, 1988 406 

15 Automotive and Metallurgical Production Centers in 

the Western Soviet Union, 1988 498 

16 Economic Regions, 1985 504 

17 Land Use, 1982 528 

18 Major Railroads, 1986 560 

19 Major Roads, 1981 564 

20 Major Inland Waterways, 1984 568 

21 Major Maritime Ports, Airports, and Sea Routes, 1986 . . . 574 

22 Major Petroleum Deposits and Pipelines, 1982 584 

23 Foreign Trade Bureaucracy, 1988 596 

24 Organization of the Ministry of Foreign Trade, 1987 598 

25 Composition of Foreign Trade, Selected Years, 1960-87 . . . 602 

26 Soviet Military-Political Concepts, 1989 656 

27 Theaters of Military Operations, 1987 674 

28 Organization of the Ministry of Defense, 1988 704 

29 Typical Organization of an Armed Service, 1988 706 

30 Military Districts and Fleets, 1988 724 

31 Organization of a Typical Military District, 1988 726 

32 Apparatus of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union 

in the Armed Services, 1988 732 

33 Management of Defense Production, 1988 736 

34 Ranks and Insignia of Strategic Rocket Forces and 

Ground Forces, 1989 740 

35 Ranks and Insignia of Air Forces and Air Defense 

Forces, 1989 741 

36 Ranks and Insignia of Naval Forces, 1989 744 

37 Organization of the Committee for State Security 

(KGB), 1988 768 

38 Organization of the Ministry of Internal Affairs 

(MVD), 1988 784 



xxi 



Preface 



Soviet Union: A Country Study seeks to present factual descriptions 
and objective interpretations of a broad range of social, political, 
economic, and national security aspects of the Soviet Union in the 
late 1980s. The authors synthesized information from books, schol- 
arly journals, official reports of governments and international 
organizations, foreign and domestic newspapers, and conference 
reports and proceedings. 

This volume supersedes the Area Handbook for the Soviet Union, 
first published in 1971. Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, 
the Soviet Union was politically, economically, and socially stag- 
nant, according to many Western observers. After Mikhail S. 
Gorbachev came to power in March 1985, however, unprecedented 
events portending substantial change began to occur. To revital- 
ize the critically ailing economy, Gorbachev introduced perestroika; 
to alter the political power structure, he introduced demokratizatsiia; 
and to provide information needed to implement both, he in- 
troduced glasnost \ These three slogans represented evolving con- 
cepts rather than formal programs with specific plans and time 
schedules. Information about events occurring in the late 1980s 
came in such volume that many observers were overwhelmed. The 
long-range impact of the events can be realistically assessed only 
after careful analysis of accurate and complete data and the per- 
spective granted with the passage of time. Meanwhile, the basic 
elements of the Soviet Union, such as history, geography, and so- 
cial, economic, and military structures, as described in this volume, 
can help readers understand the events as they occur. 

This volume covers the salient features of the Soviet Union in 
nineteen chapters that attempt to provide balanced and straight- 
forward descriptions and analyses of the subject matter. Readers 
wishing to obtain more information on subjects dealt with in each 
chapter can refer to the bibliographic essay at the end of the chap- 
ter. A complete Bibliography at the end of the book provides ad- 
ditional sources of information and complete citations. A Country 
Profile and a Chronology are also included as reference aids. The 
Glossary furnishes succinct definitions of many specialized terms 
used in the book. Measurements are given in the metric system; 
a conversion table is provided to assist readers unfamiliar with 
metric measurements (see table 1, Appendix A). 

Because confusion often arises with respect to the use of the words 
socialism and communism, a note of caution is in order concerning 



xxiii 



their use in this book. The Soviet Union and other countries that 
people in the West generally refer to as communist usually describe 
themselves as socialist, making the claim that they are working 
toward communism, which Karl Marx described as a more ad- 
vanced historical stage than socialism. In this book, socialist and 
socialism are generally used in the sense of Union of Soviet Socialist 
Republics. Soviet socialism has little resemblance to the democratic 
socialism of some West European countries. In this book, communism 
means a doctrine based on revolutionary Marxian socialism and 
Marxism- Leninism, which is the official ideology of the Soviet 
Union. 

Readers specifically interested in information on the Russian na- 
tionality and the Russian Orthodox Church should note that in- 
formation on these subjects is contained in a number of chapters. 
Hence, to avoid redundancy, the space devoted to these subjects 
in the chapter on nationalities and religions (Chapter 4) is propor- 
tionately less than that devoted to other nationalities and religions. 
Readers are especially referred to Chapter 1, which is primarily 
concerned with the history of the Russian nationality and frequentiy 
refers to the Russian Orthodox Church. 

Statistics derived from Soviet sources, especially those dealing 
with the economy and transportation, have sometimes been dis- 
puted by Western authorities. Such statistics, occasionally contain- 
ing unexplained discrepancies, have been used as the only available 
alternative and have been identified as of Soviet origin. Popula- 
tion statistics used in the book were based on the 1989 census. 
Because, however, complete results of that census had not been 
released or fully analyzed at the time the book was being written, 
some statistics were based on the 1979 census. 

Transliteration of Russian names and terms generally follows 
the Library of Congress transliteration system, but geographic 
names follow the United States Board of Geographic Names ro- 
manization system. Exceptions were made, however, if the name 
or term was listed in Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary. For 
example, Leon Trotsky was used instead of Lev Trotskii and 
Moscow instead of Moskva. Most of the Russian terms used in 
the book were not in Webster's and were therefore transliterated 
and italicized as foreign words. Hence the term for one adminis- 
trative subdivision raion was transliterated and italicized, but the 
term for another subdivision, oblast, listed in Webster's was not. 
For most organizational names, English translations — and if needed 
the acronym derived therefrom — were used. If a transliterated or- 
ganizational name or its acronym was considered sufficiently well 
known, however, it was used. For example, most readers will know 



xxiv 



that the acronym KGB stands for the Soviet secret police and to 
use CSS (based on Committee for State Security — a translation 
of the name that is transliterated Komitet gosudarstvennoi bezo- 
pasnosti) made little sense. 



xxv 



Table A. Chronology of Important Events 



Period 



Description 



NINTH CENTURY 
ca. 860 



.. 880 



Rurik, a Varangian, according to earliest chroni- 
cle of Kievan Rus', rules Novgorod and 
founds Rurikid Dynasty. 

Prince Oleg, a Varangian, first historically veri- 
fied ruler of Kievan Rus'. 



TENTH CENTURY 
911 



Prince Oleg, after attacking Constantinople, 
concludes treaty with Byzantine Empire 
favorable to Kievan Rus'. 



944 



ca. 955 



97] 



Prince Igor' compelled by Constantinople to sign 
treaty adverse to Kievan Rus'. 

Princess Olga, while regent of Kievan Rus', con- 
verts to Christianity. 

Prince Sviatoslav makes peace with Byzantine 
Empire. 



ELEVENTH CENTURY 
1015 



Prince Vladimir converts Kievan Rus' to Chris- 
tianity. 



Prince Vladimir's death leads Rurikid princes 
into fratricidal war that continues until 1036. 



1019 



Prince Iaroslav (the Wise) of Novgorod assumes 
throne of Kievan Rus'. 



1036 



1037 



Prince Iaroslav the Wise ends fratricidal war and 
later codifies laws of Kievan Rus' into Ruska 
Pravda (Rus' Justice). 

Prince Iaroslav the Wise defeats Pechenegs; con- 
struction begins on St. Sofia Cathedral in 
Kiev. 



1051 



Ilarion becomes first native metropolitan of 
Orthodox Church in Kievan Rus'. 



TWELFTH CENTURY 
1113-25 



Kievan Rus' experiences revival under Grand 
Prince Vladimir Monomakh. 



1136 



Republic of Novgorod gains independence from 
Kievan Rus'. 



1147 
1156 



Moscow first mentioned in chronicles. 
Novgorod acquires its own archbishop. 



XXV11 



Table A. — Continued 



Period 



Description 



1169 



Armies of Prince Andrei Bogoliubskii of 
Vladimir-Suzdal' sack Kiev; Andrei assumes 
tide "Grand Prince of Kiev and all Rus'" but 
chooses to reside in Suzdal'. 



THIRTEENTH CENTURY 
1219-41 



1242 



1253 



FOURTEENTH CENTURY 
1327 



Mongols invade: Kiev falls in 1240; Novgorod 
and Moscow submit to Mongol "yoke" 
without resisting. 

Aleksandr Nevskii successfully defends Nov- 
gorod against Teutonic attack. 

Prince Daniil of Galicia-Volhynia accepts royal 
crown of Kievan Rus' from pope. 



Ivan, prince of Moscow, nicknamed Kalita 
("Money Bags"), affirmed as "Grand Prince 
of Vladimir" by Mongols; Moscow becomes 
seat of metropolitan of Russian Orthodox 
Church. 



1380 



FIFTEENTH CENTURY 
1462 



1478 
1485 

SIXTEENTH CENTURY 
1505 

1510 

1533 

1547 

1552 
1556 
1565 



Dmitrii Donskoi defeats Golden Horde at Bat- 
de of Kulikovo, but Mongol domination con- 
tinues until 1480. 



Ivan III becomes grand prince of Muscovy and 
first Muscovite ruler to use titles of tsar and 
"Ruler of all Rus'." 

Muscovy defeats Novgorod. 

Muscovy conquers Tver'. 

Vasilii III becomes grand prince of Muscovy. 

Muscovy conquers Pskov. 

Grand Prince Ivan IV named ruler of Muscovy 
at age three. 

Ivan IV (the Terrible or the Dread) crowned tsar 
of Muscovy. 

Ivan IV conquers Kazan' Khanate. 

Ivan IV conquers Astrakhan' Khanate. 

Oprichnina of Ivan IV creates a state within the 
state. 



xxviii 



Table A. — Continued 



Period Description 



1571 




Tatars raid Moscow. 


1581 




Ermak begins conquest of Siberia. 


1584 




Fedor I crowned tsar. 


1589 




Patriarchate of Moscow established. 


1596 




Union of Brest establishes Uniate Church. 


1598 




Rurikid Dynasty ends with death of Fedor; Boris 
Godunov named tsar; Time of Troubles 
begins. 


EVENTEENTH CENTURY 
1601 


Three years of famine begin. 


1605 




Fedor II crowned tsar; First False Dmitrii sub- 
sequendy named tsar after Fedor II' s murder. 


1606 




Vasilii Shuiskii named tsar. 


1606-07 


Bolotnikov leads revolt. 


1610 




Second False Dmitrii proclaimed tsar. 


1610- 


13 


Poles occupy Moscow. 


1611- 


12 


Minin and Pozharskii organize counterattack 
against Poles. 


1613 




Mikhail Romanov crowned tsar, founding 
Romanov Dynasty. 


1631 




Metropolitan Mohila founds academy in Kiev. 


1645 




Alexis crowned tsar. 


1648 




Ukrainian Cossacks, led by Bohdan Khmel'- 
nyts'kyi, revolt against Polish landowners and 
gentry. 


1649 




r-i p| Pit . 1 1 ' I 11 1 

Serfdom fully established by law. 


1654 
1667 




Treaty of Pereyaslavl' places Ukraine under 
tsarist rule. 

Church council in Moscow anathemizes Old Be- 
lief but removes Patriarch Nikon; Treaty of 
Andrusovo ends war with Poland. 


1670- 


71 


Stenka Razin leads revolt. 


1676 




Fedor III crowned tsar. 



XXIX 



Table A. — Continued 



Period 



Description 



1682 



1689 



1696 



EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
1700 

1703 



1705-11 

1708 

1709 

1710 

1721 



1722 
1723-32 

1725 
1727 
1730 
1740 
1741 
1762 

1768-74 



Half brothers Ivan V and Peter I named co- 
tsars; Peter's half sister, Sofia, becomes 
regent. 

Peter I (the Great) forces Sofia to resign regency; 
Treaty of Nerchinsk ends period of conflict 
with China. 

Ivan V dies, leaving Peter the Great sole tsar; 
port of Azov captured from Ottoman Empire. 



Calendar reformed; war with Sweden begins. 

St. Petersburg founded; becomes capital of Rus- 
sia in 1713. 

Bashkirs revolt. 

First Russian newspaper published. 

Swedes defeated at Batde of Poltava. 

Cyrillic alphabet reformed. 

Treaty of Nystad ends Great Northern War with 
Sweden and establishes Russian presence on 
Baltic Sea; Peter the Great proclaims Mus- 
covy the Russian Empire; Holy Synod 
replaces patriarchate. 

Table of Ranks established. 

Russia gains control of southern shore of Cas- 
pian Sea. 

Catherine I crowned empress of Russia. 

Peter II crowned emperor of Russia. 

Anna crowned empress of Russia. 

Ivan VI crowned emperor of Russia. 

Elizabeth crowned empress of Russia. 

Peter III crowned emperor of Russia; abolishes 
compulsory state service for the gentry; 
Catherine II (the Great) crowned empress of 
Russia. 

War with Ottoman Empire ends with Treaty of 
Kuchuk-Kainarji. 



XXX 



Table A. — Continued 



Period 



Description 



1772 

1773-74 

1785 



Russia participates in first partition of Poland. 

Emelian Pugachev leads peasant revolt. 

Catherine II confirms nobility's privileges in 
Charter to the Nobility. 



1787-92 



War with Ottoman Empire ends with Treaty of 
Jassy; Ottomans recognize 1783 Russian an- 
nexation of Crimea. 



1793 and 1795 



Russia participates in second and third partitions 
of Poland. 



1796 



Paul crowned emperor of Russia; establishes 
new law of succession. 



NINETEENTH CENTURY 
1801 



Alexander I crowned emperor; conquest of Cau- 
casus region begins. 



1809 



Finland annexed from Sweden and awarded au- 
tonomous status. 



1812 



Napoleon's army occupies Moscow but is then 
driven out of Russia. 



1817-19 



Baltic peasants liberated from serfdom but given 
no land. 



1825 

1830 
1833 

1837 



"Decembrists' revolt" fails; Nicholas I crowned 
emperor. 

Polish uprising crushed. 

"Autocracy, Orthodoxy, and nationality" ac- 
cepted as guiding principles by regime. 

First Russian railroad, from St. Petersburg to 
Tsarskoe Selo, opens; Aleksandr Pushkin, 
foremost Russian writer, dies in duel. 



1840s and 1850s 



Slavophiles debate Westernizers over Russia's 
future. 



1849 



1853-56 



Russia helps to put down anti-Habsburg Hun- 
garian rebellion at Austria's request. 

Russia fights Britain, France, Sardinia, and Ot- 
toman Empire in Crimean War; Russia 
forced to accept peace settlement dictated by 
its opponents. 



xxxi 



Period 



Description 



1855 
1858 

1860 

1861 
1863 
1864 
1869 

1873-74 

1875 

1877-78 

1879 

1879-80 

1881 

1894 
1898 

TWENTIETH CENTURY 
1903 

1904-05 

1905 



Alexander II crowned emperor. 

Treaty of Aigun signed with China; northern 
bank of Amur River ceded to Russia. 

Treaty of Beijing signed with China; Ussuri 
River region awarded to Russia. 

Alexander II emancipates serfs. 

Polish rebellion unsuccessful. 

Judicial system reformed; zemstvos created. 

War and Peace by Lev Tolstoy (1828-1910) pub- 
lished. 

Army reformed; Russian youths go "to the 
people." 

Kuril Islands yielded to Japan in exchange for 
southern Sakhalin. 

War with Ottoman Empire ends with Treaty of 
San Stefano; independent Bulgaria pro- 
claimed. 

Revolutionary society Land and Liberty splits; 
People's Will and Black Repartition formed. 

The Brothers Karamazov by Fedor Dostoevskii 
(1821-81) published. 

Alexander II assassinated; Alexander III 
crowned emperor. 

Nicholas II crowned emperor. 

Russian Social Democratic Labor Party estab- 
lished and holds First Party Congress in 
March; Vladimir I. Lenin one of organizers 
of party. 

Russian Social Democratic Labor Party splits 
into Bolshevik and Menshevik factions. 

Russo-Japanese War ends with Russian defeat; 
southern Sakhalin ceded to Japan. 

"Bloody Sunday" massacre in January begins 
Revolution of 1905, a year of labor and eth- 
nic unrest; government issues so-called October 
Manifesto, calling for parliamentary elections. 



Table A. — Continued 



Period 



Description 



1906 
1911 
1914 
1916 

1917 March 



First Duma (parliament) elected. 

Stolypin, chief minister since 1906, assassinated. 

World War I begins. 

Rasputin murdered. 

(February, according to Julian calendar) Febru- 
ary Revolution, in which workers riot at 
Petrograd; Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and 
Soldiers' Deputies formed; Provisional 
Government formed; Emperor Nicholas II 
abdicates; Petrograd Soviet issues "Order 
No. 1." 



April 

July 

September 
November 



December 



1918 January 



Demonstrations lead to Aleksandr Kerensky's 
assuming leadership in government; Lenin 
returns to Petrograd from Switzerland. 

Bolsheviks oudawed after attempt to topple 
government fails. 

Lavr Kornilov putsch attempt fails. 

(October, according to Julian calendar) Bolshe- 
viks seize power from Provisional Govern- 
ment; Lenin, as leader of Bolsheviks, becomes 
head of state; Russian Soviet Federated So- 
cialist Republic (Russian Republic) formed; 
Constituent Assembly elected. 

Vecheka (secret police) created; Finns and Mol- 
davians declare independence from Russia; 
Japanese occupy Vladivostok. 

Constituent Assembly dissolved; Ukraine 
declares its independence, followed, in sub- 
sequent months, by Armenia, Azerbaydzhan, 
Belorussia, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, and 
Lithuania. 



February 



March 



Basmachi Rebellion begins in Central Asia; 
calendar changed from Julian to Gregorian. 

Treaty of Brest-Litovsk signed with Germany; 
Russia loses Poland, Finland, Baltic lands, 
Ukraine, and other areas; Russian Social 
Democratic Labor Party becomes Russian 
Communist Party (Bolshevik). 



April 



Civil War begins. 



xxxiii 



Table A. — Continued 



Period 



Description 



June 
July 

Summer 



August 
November 

1919 January 
March 

1920 January 
February 
April 

July 

October 
November 

1921 March 

Summer 
August 

1922 March 



Concentration camps established. 

Constitution of Russian Republic promulgated; 
imperial family murdered. 

War communism established; intervention in 
Civil War by foreign expeditionary forces — 
including those of Britain, France, and United 
States — begins. 

Attempt to assassinate Lenin fails; Red Terror 
begins. 

Treaty of Brest- Litovsk repudiated by Soviet 
government after Germany defeated by Al- 
lied Powers. 

Belorussia established as theoretically indepen- 
dent Soviet republic. 

Communist International (Comintern) formally 
founded at congress in Moscow; Ukraine es- 
tablished as Soviet republic. 

Blockade of Russian Republic lifted by Britain 
and other Allies. 

Peace agreement signed with Estonia; agree- 
ments with Latvia and Lithuania follow. 

War with Poland begins; Azerbaydzhan estab- 
lished as Soviet republic. 

Trade agreement signed with Britain. 

Truce reached with Poland. 

Red Army defeats Wrangel's army in Crimea; 
Armenia established as Soviet republic. 

War with Poland ends with Treaty of Riga; Red 
Army crushes Kronshtadt naval mutiny; New 
Economic Policy proclaimed; Georgia estab- 
lished as Soviet republic. 

Famine breaks out in Volga region. 

Aleksandr Blok, foremost poet of Russian Sil- 
ver Age, dies; large number of intellectuals 
exiled. 

Transcaucasian Soviet Federated Socialist 
Republic formed, uniting Armenian, Azer- 
baydzhan, and Georgian republics. 



XXXIV 



Table A. — Continued 



Period 



Description 



April 

May 
June 

December 

1924 January 
February 
Fall 

1925 April 

November 
December 

1926 April 
October 

1927 Fall 

December 

1928 January 
May 



July 



Joseph V. Stalin made general secretary of 
party; Treaty of Rapallo signed with Ger- 
many. 

Lenin suffers his first stroke. 

Socialist Revolutionary Party members put on 
trial by State Political Administration; Glavlit 
organized with censorship function. 

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Soviet 
Union) established, comprising Russian, 
Ukrainian, Belorussian, and Transcaucasian 
republics. 

Lenin dies; constitution of Soviet Union put into 
force. 

Britain recognizes Soviet Union; other European 
countries follow suit later in year. 

Regime begins to delimit territories of Central 
Asian nationalities; Turkmenia and Uzbekis- 
tan elevated to Soviet republic status. 

Nikolai I. Bukharin calls for peasants to enrich 
themselves. 

Poet Sergei Esenin commits suicide. 

Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik) becomes 
All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik). 

Grigorii V. Zinov'ev ousted from Politburo. 

Leon Trotsky and Lev B. Kamenev ousted from 
Politburo. 

Peasants sell government less grain than 
demanded because of low prices; peasant dis- 
content increases; grain crisis begins. 

Fifteenth Party Congress calls for large-scale col- 
lectivization of agriculture. 

Trotsky exiled to Alma-Ata. 

Shakhty trial begins; first executions for "eco- 
nomic crimes" follow. 

Sixth Congress of Comintern names socialist 
parties main enemy of communists. 



October 



Implementation of First Five- Year Plan begins. 



XXXV 



Table A. — Continued 



Period 



Description 



1929 January 
April 

Fall 

October 

November 
December 

1930 March 
April 

November 

1931 March 
August 

1932 May 
December 

1932-33 

1933 November 

1934 August 
September 
December 

1935 February 
May 



Trotsky forced to leave Soviet Union. 

Law on religious associations requires registra- 
tion of religious groups, authorizes church 
closings, and bans religious teaching. 

Red Army skirmishes with Chinese forces in 
Manchuria. 

Tadzhikistan splits from Uzbek Republic to form 
separate Soviet republic. 

Bukharin ousted from Politburo. 

Stalin formally declares end of New Economic 
Policy and calls for elimination of kulaks; 
forced industrialization intensifies, and col- 
lectivization begins. 

Collectivization slows temporarily. 

Poet Vladimir Maiakovskii commits suicide. 

"Industrial Party" put on trial. 

Mensheviks put on trial. 

School system reformed. 

Five-year plan against religion declared. 

Internal passports introduced for domestic 
travel; peasants not issued passports. 

Terror and forced famine rage in countryside, 
primarily in southeastern Ukrainian Repub- 
lic and northern Caucasus. 

Diplomatic relations with United States estab- 
lished. 

Union of Writers holds its First Congress. 

Soviet Union admitted to League of Nations. 

Sergei Kirov assassinated in Leningrad; Great 
Terror begins, causing intense fear among 
general populace, and peaks in 1937 and 1938 
before subsiding in latter year. 

Party cards exchanged; many members purged 
from party ranks. 

Treaties signed with France and Czechoslovakia. 



xxxvi 



Table A. — Continued 



Period 



Description 



Summer 

August 

September 
1936 June 

August 

September 

October 

December 



1937 January 
June 

1938 March 
July 

December 

1939 May 



August 

September 
October 



Seventh Congress of Comintern calls for "united 
front" of political parties against fascism. 

Stakhanovite movement to increase worker 
productivity begins. 

New system of ranks issued for Red Army. 

Restrictive laws on family and marriage issued. 

Zinov'ev, Kamenev, and other high-level offi- 
cials put on trial for alleged political crimes. 

Nikolai Ezhov replaces Genrikh Iagoda as head 
of NKVD (police); purge of party deepens. 

Soviet Union begins support for antifascists in 
Spanish Civil War. 

New constitution proclaimed; Kazakhstan and 
Kirgizia become Soviet republics; Transcau- 
casian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic 
splits into Armenian, Azerbaydzhan, and 
Georgian republics. 

Trial of "Anti-Soviet Trotskyite Center." 

Marshal Mikhail N. Tukhachevskii and other 
military leaders executed. 

Russian language required in all schools in 
Soviet Union. 

Soviet and Japanese forces fight at Lake Khasan. 

Lavrenty Beria replaces Ezhov; Great Terror 
diminishes. 

Viacheslav Molotov replaces Maksim M. Lit- 
vinov as commissar of foreign affairs; armed 
conflict with Japan at Halhin Gol in Mongo- 
lia continues until August. 

Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact signed; pact in- 
cludes secret protocol. 

Stalin joins Adolf Hitler in partitioning Poland. 

Soviet forces enter Estonia, Latvia, and Lith- 



November 



Remaining (western) portions of Ukraine and 
Belorussia incorporated into Soviet Union; 
Soviet forces invade Finland. 



xxxvii 



Table A. — Continued 



Period 



Description 



December 

1940 March 
April 

June 

August 

1941 April 
May 

June 

August 
November 

December 

1942 May 

July 

November 

1943 February 

May 

July 

September 

November 

1944 January 
May 



Soviet Union expelled from League of Nations. 

Finland sues for peace with Soviet Union. 

Polish officers massacred in Katyn Forest by 
NKVD. 

Northern Bukovina and Bessarabia seized from 
Romania and subsequendy incorporated into 
Ukrainian Republic and newly created Mol- 
davian Republic, respectively. 

Soviet Union annexes Estonia, Latvia, and 
Lithuania; Trotsky murdered in Mexico. 

Neutrality pact signed with Japan. 

Stalin becomes chairman of Council of People's 
Commissars. 

Nazi Germany attacks Soviet Union under 
Operation Barbarossa. 

Soviet and British troops enter Iran. 

Lend- Lease Law of United States applied to 
Soviet Union. 

Soviet counteroffensive against Germany begins. 

Red Army routed at Khar'kov; Germans halt 
Soviet offensive; treaty signed with Britain 
against Germany. 

Battle of Stalingrad begins. 

Red Army starts winter offensive. 

German army units surrender at Stalingrad; 
91,000 prisoners taken. 

Comintern dissolved. 

Germans defeated in tank battle at Kursk. 

Stalin allows Russian Orthodox Church to ap- 
point patriarch. 

Teheran Conference held. 

Siege of Leningrad ends after 870 days. 

Crimea liberated from German army. 



xxxviii 



Table A. — Continued 



Period 



Description 



June 
October 



1945 February 



Red Army begins summer offensive. 

Tuva incorporated into Soviet Union; armed 
struggle against Soviet rule breaks out in 
western Ukrainian, western Belorussian, 
Lithuanian, and Latvian republics and con- 
tinues for several years. 

Stalin meets with Winston Churchill and Frank- 
lin D. Roosevelt at Yalta. 



April 
May 

July-August 
August 



Soviet Union renounces neutrality with Japan. 

Red Army captures Berlin. 

Potsdam Conference attended by Stalin, 
Harry S Truman, and Churchill, who is later 
replaced by Clement R. Atdee. 

Soviet Union declares war on Japan; Soviet 
forces enter Manchuria and Korea. 



1946 March 



Regime abolishes Ukrainian Catholic Church 
(Uniate); Council of People's Commissars be- 
comes Council of Ministers. 



Summer 

1947 

September 
1948 June 

Summer 



Beginning of "Zhdanovshchina," a campaign 
against Western culture. 

Famine in southern and central regions of Euro- 
pean part of Soviet Union. 

Cominform established to replace Comintern. 

Blockade of Berlin by Soviet forces begins and 
lasts through May 1949. 

Trofim D. Lysenko begins his domination of 
fields of biology and genetics that continues 
until 1955. 



1949 January 



Council for Mutual Economic Assistance 
formed; campaign against "cosmopolitan- 
ism" launched. 



August 
1952 October 



1953 January 



Soviet Union tests its first atomic bomb. 

All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik) be- 
comes Communist Party of the Soviet Union 
(CPSU); name of Polituro is changed to 
Presidium. 

Kremlin "doctors' plot" exposed, signifying po- 
litical infighting. 



xxxix 



Table A. — Continued 



Period 



Description 



March 

April 
June 

August 
September 

1955 February 

May 

1956 February 

September 
November 

1957 July 

August 
October 

1958 March 
October 

1959 September 

1960 May 

1961 April 
July 
August 



Stalin dies; Georgii M. Malenkov, Beria, and 
Molotov form troika (triumvirate); tide of 
party chief changes from general secretary to 
first secretary. 

"Doctors' plot" declared a provocation. 

Beria arrested and later shot; Malenkov, Molo- 
tov, and Nikita S. Khrushchev form troika. 

Soviet Union tests hydrogen bomb. 

Khrushchev chosen CPSU first secretary; re- 
habilitation of Stalin's victims begins. 

Nikolai A. Bulganin replaces Malenkov as prime 
minister. 

Warsaw Pact organized. 

Khrushchev's "secret speech" at Twentieth 
Party Congress exposes Stalin's crimes. 

Minimum wage established. 

Soviet forces crush Hungarian Revolution. 

"Anti-party group" excluded from CPSU 
leadership. 

First Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile 
tested successfully. 

World's first artificial satellite, Sputnik I, 
launched. 

Khrushchev named chairman of Council of 
Ministers. 

Nobel Prize for Literature awarded to Boris 
Pasternak; campaign mounted against Paster- 
nak, who refuses to accept award. 

Khrushchev visits United States. 

Soviet air defense downs United States U-2 
reconnaissance aircraft over Soviet Union. 

Cosmonaut Iurii Gagarin launched in world's 
first manned orbital space flight. 

Khrushchev meets with President John F. 
Kennedy in Vienna. 

Construction of Berlin Wall begins. 



xl 



Table A. — Continued 



Period 



Description 



October 

1962 June 
October 

November 

1963 August 

1964 October 

1965 August 

1966 February 

April 

1967 April 
September 

1968 June 

July 

August 

1969 March 
May 

1970 October 
December 

1972 May 



Stalin's remains removed from Lenin Mau- 
soleum. 

Workers' riots break out in Novocherkassk. 

Cuban missile crisis begins, bringing United 
States and Soviet Union close to war. 

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of 
Ivan Denisovich published in Soviet journal. 

Limited Test Ban Treaty signed with United 
States and Britain. 

Khrushchev removed from power; Leonid I. 
Brezhnev becomes CPSU first secretary. 

Volga Germans rehabilitated. 

Dissident writers Andrei Siniavskii and Iulii 
Daniel tried and sentenced. 

Brezhnev's title changes from first secretary to 
general secretary; name of Presidium is 
changed back to Politburo. 

Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Allilueva, defects to 
West. 

Crimean Tatars rehabilitated but not allowed 
to return home. 

Andrei Sakharov's dissident writings published 
in samizdat. 

Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear 
Weapons signed by Soviet Union. 

Soviet-led Warsaw Pact armies invade Czecho- 
slovakia. 

Soviet and Chinese forces skirmish on Ussuri 
River. 

Major General Petr Grigorenko, a dissident, ar- 
rested and incarcerated in psychiatric hospital. 

Solzhenitsyn awarded Nobel Prize for Liter- 
ature. 

Jewish emigration to avoid persecution begins 
to increase substantially. 

Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) result 
in signing of Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty 



Xli 



Table A. — Continued 



Period 



Description 



1973 June 

1974 February 

1975 July 

August 



December 



1976 



1977 June 

October 

1979 June 

December 

1980 January 
August 

1981 February 

1982 June 

November 

1983 September 

1984 February 

1985 March 
November 



(ABM Treaty) and Interim Agreement on the 
Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms; Presi- 
dent Richard M. Nixon visits Moscow. 

Brezhnev visits Washington. 

Solzhenitsyn arrested and sent into foreign exile. 

Apollo-Soiuz space mission held jointly with 
United States. 

Helsinki Accords signed, confirming East Euro- 
pean borders and calling for enforcement of 
human rights. 

Sakharov awarded Nobel Prize for Peace. 

Helsinki watch groups formed to monitor human 
rights safeguards. 

Brezhnev named chairman of Presidium of 
Supreme Soviet. 

New constitution promulgated for Soviet Union. 

Second SALT agreement signed but not rati- 
fied by United States Senate. 

Soviet armed forces invade Afghanistan. 

Sakharov exiled to Gor'kiy. 

Summer Olympics held in Moscow and boycot- 
ted by United States. 

CPSU holds its Twenty-Sixth Party Congress. 

Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) 
begin. 

Brezhnev dies; Iurii V. Andropov named gen- 
eral secretary. 

Soviet fighter aircraft downs South Korean 
civilian airliner KAL 007 near Sakhalin. 

Andropov dies; Konstantin U. Chernenko be- 
comes general secretary. 

Chernenko dies; Mikhail S. Gorbachev becomes 
general secretary. 

Gorbachev meets with President Ronald W. 
Reagan in Geneva. 



xlii 



Table A. — Continued 



Period 



Description 



1986 February-March 
April-May 
October 

December 

1987 December 

1988 Winter 
May 

May-June 
June 

June-July 

October 

December 

1989 February 
March-April 

May 



CPSU holds its Twenty-Seventh Party Con- 
gress. 

Nuclear power plant disaster at Chernobyl' 
releases deadly radiation. 

Gorbachev and Reagan hold summit at Reyk- 
javik. 

Ethnic riots break out in Alma-Ata. 

Soviet Union and United States sign Inter- 
mediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF 
Treaty). 

Ethnic disturbances begin in Caucasus. 

Soviet authorities stop jamming Voice of Amer- 
ica broadcasts. 

Reagan visits Moscow. 

Millennium of establishment of Christianity in 
Kievan Rus' celebrated in Moscow. 

CPSU's Nineteenth Party Conference tests 
limits of glasnost' and perestroika in unprece- 
dented discussions. 

Gorbachev replaces Andrei Gromyko as chair- 
man of Presidium of Supreme Soviet; Gro- 
myko and others removed from Politburo. 

Earthquake registering 6.9 on Richter scale 
strikes Armenian Republic, destroying much 
of cities of Leninakan and Spitak and result- 
ing in 25,000 deaths. 

Soviet combat forces complete withdrawal from 
Afghanistan. 

Initial and runoff elections held for the 2,250 
seats in Congress of People's Deputies; some 
seats have more than one candidate running; 
about 87 percent of elected deputies CPSU 
members or candidate members. 

Congress of People's Deputies meets, openly 
criticizes past and present regimes before tel- 
evision audiences, and elects 542 members to 
serve in Supreme Soviet; Gorbachev elected 
by Congress of People's Deputies to new po- 
sition of chairman of Supreme Soviet. 



xliii 



Country Profile 




Country 

Formal Name: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics; abbreviated: 
USSR; transliterated: Soiuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respub- 
lik— SSSR. 

Informal Name: Soviet Union. 

Term for Citizens: Formally, Soviet people; informally, Soviets. 
Capital: Moscow. 

Geography 

Size: Approximately 22,402,200 square kilometers (land area 22, 
272,000 square kilometers); slighdy less than 2.5 times size of United 
States. 



xlv 



Location: Occupies eastern portion of European continent and 
northern portion of Asian continent. Most of country north of 50° 
north latitude. 

Topography: Vast steppe with low hills west of Ural Mountains; 
extensive coniferous forest and tundra in Siberia; deserts in Cen- 
tral Asia; mountains along southern boundaries. 

Climate: Generally temperate to Arctic continental. Wintry weather 
varies from short-term and cold along Black Sea to long-term and 
frigid in Siberia. Summer-like conditions vary from hot in southern 
deserts to cool along Arctic coast. Weather usually harsh and unpre- 
dictable. Generally dry with more than half of country receiving 
fewer than forty centimeters of rainfall per year, most of Soviet Cen- 
tral Asia and northeastern Siberia receiving only half that amount. 

Land Boundaries: 19,933 kilometers total: Afghanistan 2,384 kilo- 
meters; China 7,520 kilometers; Czechoslovakia 98 kilometers; 
Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) 17 kilo- 
meters; Finland 1,313 kilometers; Hungary 135 kilometers; Iran 
1,690 kilometers; Mongolia 3,441 kilometers; Norway 196 kilo- 
meters; Poland 1,215 kilometers; Romania 1,307 kilometers; and 
Turkey 617 kilometers. 

Water Boundaries: 42,777 kilometers washed by oceanic systems 
of Arctic, Atlantic, and Pacific. 

Land Use: 11 percent of land arable; 16 percent meadows and 
pasture; 41 percent forest and woodland; and 32 percent other, 
including tundra. 

Natural Resources: Oil, natural gas, coal, iron ore, timber, gold, 
manganese, lead, zinc, nickel, mercury, potash, phosphates, and 
most strategic minerals. 

Society 

Population: 286,717,000 (January 1989 census). Average annual 
growth rate 0.9 percent. Density twelve persons per square kilo- 
meter; 75 percent of people lived in European portion. 

Nationalities: About 51 percent of population Russian, 15 per- 
cent Ukrainian, 6 percent Uzbek, 3.5 percent Belorussian, and 24.5 
percent about 100 other nationalities. 

Religions: Religious worship authorized by Constitution, but 
Marxism-Leninism, the official ideology, militantiy atheistic. Relia- 
ble statistics unavailable, but about 18 percent Russian Orthodox; 



xlvi 



17 percent Muslim; and nearly 7 percent Roman Catholic, Pro- 
testant, Armenian Orthodox, Georgian Orthodox, and Jewish com- 
bined. Officially, most of remainder atheist. 

Languages: Russian the official language. Over 200 other languages 
and dialects spoken, often as the primary tongue; 18 languages 
spoken by groups of more than 1 million each. About 75 percent 
of people spoke Slavic languages. 

Education: Highly centralized school system with standardized cur- 
riculum. Compulsory attendance through eleventh grade. Strong 
emphasis on training for vocations selected by central authorities. 
Indoctrination in Marxist-Leninist ideology at all levels. Science 
and technology emphasized at secondary level and above. As of 
1979 census, official literacy rate 99.8 percent for persons between 
nine and forty-nine years old. Over 5.3 million studied at univer- 
sities and institutes, nearly 50 percent part time. All education free, 
and in many cases students received stipends. 

Health and Welfare: Medical care by government health institu- 
tions; free but of poor quality for general public despite highest 
number of physicians and hospital beds per capita in world. Wel- 
fare and pension programs provided, albeit marginally, for sub- 
stantial segments of population. 

Politics and Government 

Political Party: Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), 
only party permitted by Constitution, controlled government ap- 
paratus and decisions affecting economy and society. CPSU fol- 
lowed ideology of Marxism- Leninism and operated on principle 
of democratic centralism. Primary CPSU bodies: Politburo, highest 
decision-making organ; Secretariat, controller of party bureaucracy; 
and Central Committee, party's policy forum. CPSU membership 
more than 19 million (9.7 percent of adult population) in 1987, 
dominated by male Russian professionals. Party members occupied 
positions of authority in all officially recognized institutions through- 
out country. 

Government: As authorized by 1977 Constitution, fourth since 1918, 
government executed decisions of CPSU pertaining primarily to 
economy but also to security affairs and social issues. Congress of 
People's Deputies created in 1988 by amendment to Constitution; 
highest organ of legislative and executive authority; consisted of 
2,250 deputies, about 87 percent of whom CPSU members or can- 
didate members and some of whom selected in first multicandidate 



xlvii 



(although not multiparty) elections since early Soviet period; slated 
to meet once a year for a few days; met for first time in May 1989; 
deputies openly discussed issues, elected a chairman, and selected 
542 deputies from among its membership to constitute a reor- 
ganized, bicameral Supreme Soviet, a standing legislature slated 
to remain in session six to eight months annually. Prior to 1989, 
former Supreme Soviet was constitutionally highest organ of legis- 
lative and executive authority but met only a few days annually; 
its Presidium managed affairs throughout year. Council of Ministers 
administered party decisions, mainly regarding economic manage- 
ment, by delegating authority to its Presidium; chairman of Council 
of Ministers also sat on CPSU Politburo. 

Judicial System: Supreme Court, highest judicial body, had lit- 
tle power, lacking authority to determine constitutionality of laws, 
to interpret laws, or to strike laws down. 

Administrative Divisions: Country administratively divided into 
one soviet federated socialist republic (Russian) and fourteen soviet 
socialist republics (Armenian, Azerbaydazhan, Belorussian, Esto- 
nian, Georgian, Kazakh, Kirgiz, Latvian, Lithuanian, Moldavian, 
Tadzhik, Turkmen, Ukrainian, and Uzbek). Below republic level, 
administrative subdivisions complicated, varying with each republic 
and including following categories: autonomous oblast, autonomous 
okrug, autonomous republic, krai, oblast, and raion. Only Russian 
Republic had all categories. 

Foreign Relations: Diplomatic relations with majority of world's 
nations. Main foreign policy objectives as determined by CPSU 
Politburo: enhance national security, maintain presence in Eastern 
Europe, continue "peaceful coexistence" with free world democra- 
cies, and seek increased influence in Third World. 

International Agreements and Memberships: Dominant part- 
ner in Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon) and 
Warsaw Pact. Active participant in United Nations and its special- 
ized agencies. Signatory to Final Act of Conference on Security 
and Cooperation in Europe (Helsinki Accords) and many other 
multilateral and bilateral agreements. 

Economy 

Salient Features: Centrally planned socialist economy. Govern- 
ment owned and operated all industries: banking, transportation, 
and communications systems; trade and public services; and most 



xlviii 



of agricultural sector. CPSU, guided by principles of Marxism- 
Leninism, controlled planning and decision-making processes; cen- 
tral planners determined investment, prices, distribution of goods 
and services, and allocation of material and human resources ac- 
cording to CPSU priorities. Defense and heavy industries empha- 
sized over consumer and agricultural sectors. Availability and 
quality of food, clothing, housing, and services often inadequate 
for average citizen. Economy planned as being largely self-sufficient. 
Economic development and population centers primarily in Eu- 
ropean portion, but many raw material and energy resources in 
Asian areas, making access difficult and both exploration and trans- 
portation costly. Declining economic growth since mid-1970s. Be- 
ginning in 1985, regime attempted to implement economic reform. 

Gross National Product (GNP): Estimated at US$2.4 trillion in 
1986; US$8,375 per capita in 1986; real growth rate in 1988 about 
1.5 percent, continuing deceleration begun in mid-1970s. 

Revenue: Largest source of government funds taxation of enter- 
prise profits and turnover taxes; personal income taxes provided 
less than 10 percent. 

Industry: Diversified industrial base directed by complicated, cen- 
tralized bureaucratic system. Highest priorities given to machine- 
building and metal-working industries and to military materiel 
manufacturing; consumer industries not allocated comparable 
human, financial, or material resources. Technological advances 
applied primarily to defense industries. Major industrial branches: 
manufacturing (including defense), chemicals, metallurgy, textiles, 
food processing, and construction. Employment in industry and 
construction 38 percent in 1988. 

Energy: Self- sufficient in energy and a major energy exporter. 
World's largest producer of oil and natural gas and second largest 
coal producer. Enormous energy resources in Siberia, but cost of 
extraction and transportation over great distances to western in- 
dustrial areas high. Main generators of electric power: thermo- 
electric (coal, oil, natural gas, and peat), nuclear power plants, and 
hydroelectric stations. 

Agriculture: Collective farms and state farms supplied bulk of 
agricultural needs. Wheat and other grains, potatoes, sugar beets, 
cotton, sunflower seeds, and flax main crops. Private plots — small 
percentage of sown area — produced substantial quantities of meat, 
milk, eggs, and vegetables. Large amounts of grain and meat im- 
ported. Despite high investment, serious problems in agriculture 



xlix 



persisted: insufficient fertilizer; inadequate refrigeration, storage, 
and transportation; wasteful processing; and unrealistic planning 
and management. More fundamental problems: only 1.3 percent 
of arable land receives optimal precipitation; widely fluctuating crop 
yields; and many fertile areas have insufficient growing seasons 
because of northern latitudes or moisture deficiency. 

Fishing: World's largest oceangoing fishing fleet, accompanied by 
large, modern, fish-processing ships, operated in Atlantic and Pa- 
cific ocean systems. Inland seas and rivers accounted for less than 
10 percent of catch. 

Forestry: With a third of world's forested areas, country's produc- 
tion of logs and sawn timber exceeded that of all other countries, 
despite inefficient and wasteful processing. Inadequate processing 
capacity made production of pulp, paper cardboard, plywood, and 
other wood products low. 

Foreign Trade: Government policies of self- sufficiency and strict 
control maintained trade in minor economic role. In 1985 exports 
and imports totaled US$185.9 billion, but each accounted for only 
4 percent of GNP. Major trade partners included other communist 
countries, particularly those of Eastern Europe, which accounted 
for 67 percent of trade. Industrialized countries accounted for 22 
percent and Third World countries for 1 1 percent. Major exports 
petroleum and petroleum products, natural gas, metals, wood, 
agricultural products, and manufactured goods, primarily ma- 
chinery, arms, and military equipment. Major imports grain and 
other agricultural products, machinery and industrial equipment, 
steel products (especially large-diameter pipe), and consumer goods. 
Balance of trade favorable in mid-1980s. Trade with socialist coun- 
tries conducted on bilateral basis with imports balancing exports. 
Value of exports to Third World countries, including arms and 
military equipment, exceeded hard- currency deficit caused by un- 
favorable trade balance with West. Merchant fleet consisted of about 
2,500 oceangoing ships. 

Exchange Rate: Officially, 0.61 ruble per US$1 (1988 average), 
but rubles had no official value outside of Soviet Union. Soviet 
authorities set exchange rates based on policy rather than market 
factors. Unofficial (black market) exchange rates offered consider- 
ably more rubles per United States dollar. 

Fiscal Year: Calendar year. 

Science and Technology: Marked by highly developed pure sci- 
ence and innovation at theoretical level, but interpretation and 



1 



application fell short. Biology, chemistry, materials science, mathe- 
matics, and physics were fields in which Soviet citizens excelled. 
Science emphasized at all levels of education, and very large number 
of engineers graduated each year. Shortfall in science and tech- 
nology could be attributed to centrally planned and controlled econ- 
omy and to priority given to national security, all of which provided 
little incentive to design and create prototypes of products for mass 
market. Without orders from central government, no product de- 
sign and prototype saw fruition or stimulated innovation of other 
products. Soviet regimes, in many cases, have chosen to adopt for- 
eign technology rather than to invest money, talent, and time to 
develop Soviet Union's indigenous technological capacity. 

Transportation and Communications 

Railroads: In 1986 about 145,600 kilometers of track, of which 
50,600 kilometers electrified, almost all wide gauge; 3.8 trillion ton- 
kilometers of freight and 4.3 billion passenger fares, of which 3.9 
billion on suburban lines, transported in 1986. 

Highways: 1,609,900 kilometers in 1987, of which 1,196,000 
kilometers hard-surfaced (asphalt, concrete, stone block, asphalt- 
treated, gravel, or crushed stone) and 413,900 kilometers earth; 
488.5 billion ton-kilometers of freight transported by trucks, primar- 
ily on short hauls for agricultural sector in 1986; 48.8 billion pas- 
sengers boarded, primarily commuters transported by bus. Use 
of private automobiles limited. 

Inland Waterways: 122,500 kilometers in 1987, exclusive of Cas- 
pian Sea; 255.6 billion ton-kilometers of freight transported by in- 
land waterways in 1986. 

Pipelines: 81,500 kilometers for oil and 185,000 kilometers for 
natural gas in 1986. 

Ports: Over 100 major maritime and river ports, including Archan- 
gel, Astrakhan', Baku, Leningrad, Moscow, Murmansk, Odessa, 
Riga, Tallin, and Vladivostok. Many maritime ports on Arctic 
Ocean, northern Pacific Ocean, and Baltic Sea closed annually be- 
cause of ice. Many river ports also closed for varying periods an- 
nually. 

Civil Aviation: 4,500 major transport aircraft. Airfields: 4,530 
usable; 1,050 with permanent surface runways; 30 with runways 
over 3,659 meters, 490 with runways 2,440 to 3,659 meters; and 
660 with runways 1,220 to 2,439 meters. 



li 



Communications: Mass media controlled and directed by CPSU. 
More than 8,000 daily newspapers in about sixty languages with 
combined circulation of about 170 million. Nearly 5,500 weekly, 
monthly, and quarterly magazines and journals with combined cir- 
culation of about 160 million. About 83,500 books and brochures 
published in 1986 in 2.2 million copies. Radio broadcasting 1,400 
hours of daily programs in seventy languages. Main programming 
emanated from Moscow's eight radio channels. 162 million radio 
sets. Television broadcasting, mainly from Moscow, by way of 350 
stations and 1 ,400 relay facilities to 75 million households with tele- 
vision sets. Private telephones very limited. 

National Security 

Defense Establishment: Based on Marxist-Leninist theory of war, 
CPSU determined missions and directed management of world's 
largest military organization. Defense Council provided strategic 
leadership. Five armed services, numbering about 3,750,000 out 
of a total of nearly 6 million troops in uniform in 1989, and numer- 
ous logistical and support services. Of the 6 million, 75 percent 
conscripts, 5 percent career enlisted, and 20 percent officers, most 
of whom were Russian. Compulsory premilitary training; military 
conscription of males at age eighteen, with few exceptions. 

Strategic Rocket Forces: Primary strategic offensive forces, num- 
bering about 300,000 in 1989. Controlled all ground-based nuclear 
missiles and operations in space. 

Ground Forces: Largest of services, with a force of about 2 mil- 
lion troops in 1989 and comprising 150 motorized rifle and 52 tank 
divisions, in three states of readiness, as well as rocket and artillery 
troops, air defense troops, and other combat and support troops. 

Air Forces: In 1989 numbered about 450,000. Consisted of Stra- 
tegic Air Armies, for long-range bombing; Frontal Aviation, for 
support of Ground Forces; and Military Transport Aviation, for 
strategic mobility of armed services. 

Air Defense Forces: Numbered about 500,000 in 1989. Operated 
extensive air defense system, controlling surface-to-air missile 
launchers, air defense aircraft and missiles, and space defenses. 

Naval Forces: In 1989 numbered about 500,000. Consisted of sub- 
stantial numbers of surface combatants and support ships, missile 
and attack submarines, and naval aircraft. Organized into four fleets 
and several flotillas with shore-based support facilities in strategic 
locations. 



lii 



Paramilitary Forces: Seven airborne divisions subordinate to 
Supreme High Command. Elite Special Purpose Forces subordinate 
to General Staff. Internal Troops and Border Troops organized, 
equipped, and trained as military forces but assigned to Ministry 
of Internal Affairs (Ministerstvo vnutrennykh del — MVD) and to 
Committee for State Security (Komitet gosudarstvennoi bezopas- 
nosti — KGB), respectively. 

Defense Spending: Estimated between 15 and 17 percent of gross 
national product (GNP) in 1989. Military materiel production, su- 
pervised by military, received best available managers, workers, 
technology, and materials. 

Military Presence Overseas: Naval combatants in Mediterranean 
Sea and Indian Ocean with limited presence, mainly submarines, 
elsewhere. Ground Forces in Afghanistan numbered 115,000 until 
withdrawal in 1989; withdrawals announced in German Democratic 
Republic (East Germany) and elsewhere but, as of 1989, substan- 
tial forces remained in East Germany, and some forces remained 
in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Mongolia, and Cuba. Mili- 
tary advisers in several Third World nations. 

Security Police: Substantial political and regular police protected 
authoritarian CPSU from perceived internal and external threats 
and combated ordinary crimes. KGB maintained internal and ex- 
ternal espionage and counterintelligence networks and controlled 
Border Troops and other specialized security troops. MVD inves- 
tigated nonpolitical crime, operated labor camps for prisoners, and 
controlled militarized Internal Troops. 




i II. ' 




Laydzhan-*^ KAZAKH 



VTURKim^ -UZBEK) 



r 



T t 



'' w ' v ""' }tadzhik 
.. . . 



Figure 1. Administrative Divisions of the Soviet Union, 1989 



lvi 



Introduction 



IN MID- 1991 THE SOVIET UNION remained in a state of tur- 
moil after the weakening of the authority of the Communist Party 
of the Soviet Union (CPSU) had profoundly disturbed the socialist 
system and unleashed broad nationality unrest. Mikhail S. Gor- 
bachev, the general secretary of the CPSU and president of the Soviet 
Union, had recognized that the development of socialism (see Glos- 
sary) was faltering and that the cooperation of the Soviet people was 
needed to revitalize the country's economy and society. He endeav- 
ored to reform both the party and the socialist system without radi- 
cally altering either one. But Gorbachev's attempts at political reform 
and economic restructuring shook the centralized, authoritarian sys- 
tem that had been dominated and controlled by the party since the 
Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. The seriously flawed Soviet system 
could not readily adapt to extensive reform and restructuring. 

The historical experience of the multinational Soviet Union is 
varied and complex and helps illuminate contemporary events and 
institutions. The histories of the predecessor states of the Soviet 
Union — Muscovy and the Russian Empire — demonstrate some 
long-term trends having applicability to the Soviet period: the 
predominant role of the East Slavs, particularly the Russians; the 
dominance of the state over the individual; territorial acquisition, 
which continued sporadically; nationality problems, which increased 
as diverse peoples became subjects of the state as a result of ter- 
ritorial expansion; a general xenophobia, coupled with admiration 
for Western ideas and technology and disruptive sporadic campaigns 
to adopt them; and cyclical periods of repression and reform. 

The death knell of the Russian Empire came in March 1917, when 
the people of Petrograd (present-day Leningrad) rose up in an un- 
planned and unorganized protest against the tsarist regime and con- 
tinued their efforts until Tsar Nicholas II abdicated. His government 
collapsed, leaving power in the hands of an elected Duma, which 
formed the Provisional Government. That government was in turn 
overthrown in November 1917 by the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir I. 
Lenin. The Bolsheviks (who began calling themselves Communists 
in 1918) emerged victorious after a bitterly fought Civil War 
(1918-21). They secured their power and in December 1922 es- 
tablished the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Soviet Union), 
which included almost all the territory of the former Russian Em- 
pire. The new government prohibited other political organizations 



lvii 



and inaugurated one-party rule, which exerted centralized control 
over the political, economic, social, and cultural lives of the peo- 
ple. Lenin, as head of the party, became the de facto ruler of the 
country. 

After Lenin's death in 1924, Joseph V. Stalin gradually assumed 
supreme power in the party and the state by removing opponents 
from influential positions. Stalin ordered the construction of a so- 
cialist economy through the appropriation by the state of private 
industrial and agricultural properties. His ruthless policy of forced 
industrialization and collectivization of agriculture caused massive 
human suffering, as did his purge of party members. As the initi- 
ator of the Great Terror (see Glossary), Stalin also decimated the 
economic, social, military, cultural, and religious elites in the Rus- 
sian Republic and in some of the non-Russian republics. Millions 
of citizens were executed, imprisoned, or starved. Nevertheless, 
the Soviet state succeeded in developing an industrial base of ex- 
traordinary dimensions, albeit skewed toward military and heavy 
industry rather than consumer needs. Stalin believed that the rapid 
development of heavy industry was necessary to ensure the Soviet 
Union's survival. His fear of attack led to the signing of the Nazi- 
Soviet Nonaggression Pact of 1939, enabling the Soviet Union to 
acquire the eastern portion of Poland (western Ukraine), the Bal- 
tic states, and Bessarabia but failing to forestall for long the Nazi 
invasion of the Soviet Union that began in June 1941 . After several 
crushing military defeats, the Red Army finally gained the offen- 
sive in 1943, expelled the enemy, and, by 1945, had occupied most 
of Eastern Europe. Although more than 20 million Soviet citizens 
died as a result of the war, the world was forced to acknowledge 
the tremendous power of the Soviet military forces. 

In the postwar period, the Soviet Union converted its military 
occupation of the countries of Eastern Europe into political and 
economic domination by installing regimes dependent on Moscow. 
It also pursued its goal of extending Soviet power abroad. The 
Western powers reacted to Soviet expansionism, and thus began 
the Cold War. Simultaneously, Stalin rebuilt the devastated Soviet 
economy while retaining central planning and the emphasis on 
heavy industry and military production rather than satisfying the 
needs of the citizens. Suppression of dissent and human rights con- 
tinued unabated. 

After Stalin's death in 1953, Nikita S. Khrushchev gradually 
became the dominant Soviet leader and, in a dramatic move, 
renounced his predecessor's use of terror and repression. He con- 
tinued, however, a confrontational foreign policy toward the West. 
His attempts at domestic reform, particularly in agriculture, and 



lviii 



his instigation of a missile crisis in Cuba, which almost launched 
a nuclear war, contributed to his ouster as party leader and head 
of state in 1964. After an extended period of collective leadership, 
Leonid I. Brezhnev assumed party and government power and in- 
itiated a foreign policy of detente with the West. He continued the 
traditional economic policy of emphasizing heavy industry and mili- 
tary production over civilian needs. 

At the death of Brezhnev in 1982, the political, economic, and 
cultural life of the country was controlled by a conservative, en- 
trenched, and aging bureaucracy. Brezhnev's successors, Iurii V. 
Andropov and Konstantin U. Chernenko, were in power too briefly 
before their deaths to effect lasting change, although Andropov at- 
tempted to initiate some reforms. When Gorbachev was selected 
general secretary of the CPSU and head of the Soviet state in 1985, 
the deterioration of the Soviet socialist system had nearly reached 
crisis proportions. Gorbachev announced that * 'revolutionary" 
change was required to revitalize the country, and he began his 
programs of perestroika, glasnost\ and demokratizatsiia (see Glossary). 

Gorbachev's efforts at political and economic reform, however, 
unleashed a flood of events leading to a profound political crisis 
and broad nationality unrest while leaving fundamental economic 
problems unresolved. Several of the nationalities having union 
republic (see Glossary) status began to seek greater political and 
economic autonomy; indeed, some sought complete independence 
from the Soviet multinational federation. Longstanding rivalries 
and enmities among nationality groups that had been suppressed 
by successive Soviet regimes exploded in some areas of the coun- 
try, causing loss of life and property. Thus, the authoritarian so- 
cialist system, although undergoing tentative restructuring, became 
less capable of effectively responding to societal disorder and of im- 
plementing necessary fundamental change rapidly. In the 1990s, 
Gorbachev's policy of perestroika offered the people little in substan- 
tive, near- term economic improvement, and his policies of glasnost' 
and demokratizatsiia resulted in rapidly raising their expectations while 
lessening the regime's controls over society. As a result, in mid- 1991 
the Soviet Union appeared to be a disintegrating federation with 
a collapsing economy and a despairing, confused society. 

Internationally, the Soviet Union's affairs also appeared to be 
in a state of fundamental change. Beginning in late 1989, the Soviet 
Union's East European empire crumbled as citizens in Czecho- 
slovakia, the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), and 
Romania overthrew their communist dictators with at least the tacit 
approval of Gorbachev. Earlier in the year, the people of Poland 
and Hungary had overthrown their communist systems. The actions 



lix 



of the peoples of Eastern Europe led to the dissolution, in May 
and June 1991, respectively, of the two Soviet-dominated, multi- 
national organizations, the Warsaw Pact (see Appendix C) and the 
Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon; see Appen- 
dix B) that had helped bind Eastern Europe to the Soviet Union. 
In a collaborative effort with the United States, Gorbachev met 
with President George H.W. Bush at Malta in December 1989 and 
at Washington in May-June 1990 to effectively end the Cold War 
and to move toward a cooperative relationship. In August 1991, 
Bush and Gorbachev signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, 
which required the United States and the Soviet Union to cut their 
nuclear weapons within seven years so that each side would have 
only 4,900 ballistic missile nuclear warheads as part of a total of 
6,000 "accountable" warheads. The two countries had been en- 
gaged in the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) since 1982. 
In another collaborative effort, the Soviet Union voted with the 
United States and an international coalition of nations to oppose 
the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq, a nation that had been the recipient 
of substantial amounts of Soviet military advice, equipment, and 
weapons. 

It was Gorbachev's "new thinking" (see Glossary) in foreign 
policy that produced the most dramatic and far-reaching results 
of his reform efforts. In addition to the significant developments 
just mentioned, these included the withdrawal of Soviet armed forces 
from Afghanistan; acceptance of national self-determination for the 
East European communist countries and a promised complete with- 
drawal of Soviet troops from those countries; agreement to a uni- 
fied Germany remaining in the North Atiantic Treaty Organization 
(NATO); and the ending of support for Cuban military operations 
in Angola. The international community began to regard the Soviet 
Union as less menacing and acknowledged that the actions it had 
taken contributed substantially to the ending of the Cold War. 
Gorbachev was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1991 for his 
foreign policy initiatives and for their impact on world affairs. By 
no means, however, did the Soviet Union abandon its foreign policy 
goals. It continued its economic and military support of some long- 
standing allies, such as Afghanistan, Cuba, and Vietnam, as well 
as Third World client states, although it often chose to act covertly, 
in the hope of receiving economic aid from the West. 

In 1991 the Soviet economy continued to be beset with serious 
problems that had brought the Soviet Union to the point of crisis. 
The problems included poor planning by government officials; in- 
efficient production methods; lack of incentives to boost efficiency; 
lack of worker discipline; unemployment, underemployment, and 



Ix 



strikes; shortages of food and consumer goods; theft of state 
property; wasteful use of resources; prices distorted by a lack of 
market mechanisms; and investments of scarce funds in projects 
of dubious value. The system of central planning and rigid con- 
trol by Moscow bureaucrats was partially disrupted by economic 
problems and the regime's policy of perestroika. Nevertheless, almost 
all natural resources, agricultural and industrial enterprises (see 
Glossary), transportation and communications systems, and finan- 
cial institutions remained in the hands of the party-controlled 
government. In addition, the vast majority of workers remained, 
effectively, salaried employees of the government. Although the 
1977 Constitution, as amended and changed, provided for cooper- 
ative or collective ownership of property, it also stated that the "so- 
cialist ownership of the means of production" was the foundation 
of the economy, and socialist ownership remained the preferred 
form of ownership. The Gorbachev regime, however, sought to 
devise a restructuring program that would enable market forces 
rather than government planners to make many economic deci- 
sions. Thus, in the early 1990s the economic reform envisioned 
by Gorbachev in the late 1980s seemed to be shifting away from 
centralized planning to a market-oriented economy. 

Indeed, in 1990 the Supreme Soviet debated several proposals 
for economic reform before it, in October of that year, approved 
one endorsed by Gorbachev called "Guidelines for the Stabiliza- 
tion of the Economy and Transition to a Market Economy. ' ' This 
program saw no alternative to shifting toward a market economy 
but provided neither a detailed plan nor a schedule for implemen- 
tation. It did, however, establish four phases for the transition: first, 
stabilization of the economy and initiation of the privatization of 
state-owned enterprises; second, liberalization of prices, establish- 
ment of a safety net for people adversely affected, and exercise of 
fiscal restraints over government expenditures; third, adjustment 
of the pay scale for workers and institution of housing and finan- 
cial reforms; and fourth, as markets stabilized, transformation of 
the ruble from being nonconvertible to convertible, so as to en- 
able Soviet and foreign businesses to exchange currencies at inter- 
national rates. Price reform, a key element of the transition to a 
market economy, was to be administered and monitored carefully 
by central authorities. This transition was estimated to require two 
years. An important, but not easily achieved, requirement for its 
success was the integrity of the union and its constituent republics. 

In spite of its many economic and political problems, the Soviet 
Union had more of the natural and human resources essential for 
industrial production than any other country in the world. It had 



lxi 



vast quantities of important minerals and abundant energy sup- 
plies. It also had a very large, technically qualified labor force and 
a higher percentage of people working in industry than most 
Western nations. Yet, industrial productivity regularly fell behind 
planned goals for several reasons. First, raw materials, including 
fuels, had become less readily available in the heavily industrial- 
ized and heavily populated European part of the Soviet Union, 
while the Asian part of the country, which contained abundant 
natural resources, continued to lack an industrial infrastructure 
and the stable, skilled labor force necessary to extract the needed 
materials. Second, the formidable, and perhaps impossible, task 
of uniting materials, energy, and skilled workers with appropriate 
industrial enterprises on a timely and cost-effective basis was the 
responsibility of the increasingly bureaucratic central planning agen- 
cies that responded to political, rather than economic, priorities. 
Third, industrial enterprises, particularly those engaged in exclu- 
sively nondefense production, were constrained by obsolescent 
machinery and a lack of innovation. 

Producing and distributing food in sufficient quality, variety, 
and quantity had eluded the Gorbachev regime, as well as all the 
other regimes since the Bolshevik Revolution. Fresh fruits, vegeta- 
bles, and meats were in chronically short supply in the stores owned 
and operated by the government, and imports of grain and meat 
were frequent and necessary. Nevertheless, possessing the world's 
most extensive cultivated area, a large agricultural labor force, con- 
siderable investment in machinery, chemical fertilizers, and irri- 
gation, the Soviet Union had made itself the world's second largest 
grower of agricultural commodities and was first in many of them. 
The main reason for the anomaly between the high agricultural 
potential and the low food availability in the stores was the cen- 
tralized administration of agriculture by bureaucratic planners who 
had little understanding of local conditions. Other reasons for the 
anomaly included the inadequacy of incentives, equipment, and 
modern techniques available to farm workers; the cold climate and 
uncertain moisture conditions; the failure of the transportation sys- 
tem to move harvested crops promptly; the lack of adequate storage 
facilities; and the paucity of refrigerated transportation. Massive 
amounts of foodstuffs simply rotted in the fields or in storage. 

Bypassing the government system, peasant farmers, most of 
whom were women, raised about one-fourth of the country's food 
on their private plots and then sold their produce privately. The 
area thus farmed amounted to about 3 percent of the total culti- 
vated area, most of which was on collective farms (see Glossary) 
and state farms (see Glossary). 



Ixii 



The transportation system, owned and operated by the govern- 
ment, continued in 1991 to exhibit serious deficiencies, particu- 
larly with respect to its limited capacity, outdated technologies, and 
poor maintenance. The main purpose of transportation in the Soviet 
Union, as determined by successive regimes, was to fulfill nation- 
al economic needs that the party decided on, rather than to serve 
the interests of private businesses or citizens. The structure of the 
subsidized Soviet transportation system was greatly affected by the 
large size, geographic features, and northern climate of the coun- 
try. Also, the distribution of the population and industry (largely 
in the European part) and the natural resources (largely in the Asian 
part) helped determine the transportation system's structure. Rail- 
roads were the primary mode of transporting freight and passengers 
over long distances. Trucks were used mainly in urban and indus- 
trialized areas to transport raw materials from rail lines and 
manufactured products to them. Buses were the primary mode of 
conveyance for people in urban areas. For the vast majority of peo- 
ple, automobiles, which numbered only about 12 million, were not 
an important means of transportation. Without perceiving a need 
to move people or freight long distances on roads, successive Soviet 
regimes saw little economic reason to build a modern network of 
highways, even in the European part of the country. Roads out- 
side of cities generally had gravel or dirt surfaces and were poor 
by Western standards. For intercity and long-distance travel where 
time was a factor, the government airline, Aeroflot, provided low- 
cost transportation but had few amenities, and it had a safety record 
that concerned many Western passengers. 

Foreign trade, which might conceivably contribute to solving the 
Soviet Union's economic problems, traditionally played a minor role. 
The Soviet government preferred instead to strive for self-sufficiency 
in all areas of the economy. With extensive natural resources, in- 
cluding energy sources, decision makers saw foreign trade primarily 
as a device to serve international political interests. Thus, after World 
War II the Soviet Union's primary trading partners were the East 
European communist countries and other socialist and socialist- 
oriented countries. Trade with Third World countries was also con- 
ducted primarily for political rather than economic reasons and often 
involved the exchange of Soviet-made weapons and military equip- 
ment for raw materials. Trade with the West, particularly the United 
States, varied according to the political climate and the requirement 
for hard-currency (see Glossary) payments. The Soviet Union ac- 
quired hard currency by selling its minerals, fuels, and gold bul- 
lion on the world market, primarily to the West. In turn, the Soviet 
Union bought Western manufactures, especially high-technology 



lxiii 



items, and agricultural products, mainly grains. In the late 1980s, 
Soviet foreign indebtedness, principally to West European com- 
mercial banks, rose substantially, reaching US$54 billion in 1989, 
in part because the price of oil and natural gas, the main hard- 
currency exports, fell on the world market. Soviet exports to com- 
munist and other socialist countries consisted primarily of energy, 
manufactures, and consumer goods. In mid- 1991 increasing hard- 
currency indebtedness, decreasing oil production, mounting domestic 
economic problems, and a requirement for advanced technology 
forced Gorbachev to seek increased participation in international 
economic organizations, trade with foreign countries, foreign eco- 
nomic assistance, and reduction of unprofitable trade with the Soviet 
Union's allies. Foreign trade and economic assistance were urgendy 
needed to make the economy more efficient, as well as to help im- 
prove the standard of living. 

The living conditions of the majority of the Soviet people were 
more comparable to some Third World countries than to those of 
an industrially developed superpower. Even Soviet sources ac- 
knowledged that about 55 million people (approximately 20 per- 
cent of the population) were living below the official poverty level, 
but some Western analysts considered that far more people were, 
in fact, impoverished. The availability and distribution of food, 
clothing, and shelter were controlled by the government, but the 
supply was inadequate and generally became worse as the Gor- 
bachev regime attempted economic reforms. 

The cost to Soviet consumers of many essential consumer items 
and services was remarkably low compared with the cost of simi- 
lar items and services in the West. Soviet prices were set artificially 
low by the government, which subsidized the cost of selected items 
in an attempt to ensure accessibility by all citizens. The practical 
impact of the subsidies, however, was to distort the real produc- 
tion and distribution costs, reduce the availability of the items, and 
inflate the real cost of other items that were not subsidized. Another 
impact was to increase the resistance of citizens to price increases 
when the regime tried to adjust the prices of items and services 
to correspond more closely to the real costs of their production and 
distribution. 

Many educational benefits were free and guaranteed to the 
citizens by the Constitution. Education, mandatory through the 
eleventh grade, provided excellent schooling in mathematics, for- 
eign languages, and the physical sciences. Training in these fields 
was offered at universities, which were generally available to chil- 
dren of the elite, and at institutes, which were available to students 
without political connections. Universities and institutes were 



lxiv 



excellent by Western standards but tended to be very narrowly fo- 
cused. The main purpose of education in the Soviet Union was 
to produce socially motivated and technically qualified people who 
were able to serve the state-run economy. In 1991 educators were 
developing reforms for the state- controlled system that included 
the privatization of schools. 

Medical services were also guaranteed by the Constitution and 
enabled government officials to claim that the Soviet Union had 
the world's highest number of doctors and hospital beds per capita. 
Similar to the purpose of education, the main purpose of medical 
care was to ensure a healthy work force for the centrally controlled 
economy. Training of health care professionals, although not as 
advanced as that in the West, prepared the large numbers of doc- 
tors, the majority of whom were women, and medical assistants 
to attend to the basic medical needs of the people, millions of whom 
lived in rural or geographically remote areas. Medical care was 
free of charge, but to obtain specialized, or sometimes even rou- 
tine, medicines or care, ordinary citizens used bribes or Mat (see 
Glossary). Although hospital care was available without charge, 
it was comparable to some Third World countries because of the 
lack of modern medical equipment and some medicines and sup- 
plies, such as sterile syringes, and because of poor sanitation in 
general. Members of the elite, particularly high-level party, gov- 
ernment, economic, and cultural officials and their families, were 
served by a much higher quality health care system than that avail- 
able to average citizens. 

Soviet society, although officially classless according to Marxism- 
Leninism, was divided into four socio-occupational groups by 
Western sociologists: peasants and agricultural specialists; blue- 
collar workers; white-collar workers; and the party and govern- 
ment elite and cultural and scientific intelligentsia. Social status 
was also affected by the level and field of education, place of resi- 
dence, nationality, and party membership and party rank. High 
socio-occupational status was generally accompanied by above- 
average pay, but more important for the individual, it offered in- 
creased access to scarce consumer goods, and even foreign goods, 
as well as social prestige and other perquisites for the individual 
and his or her family. The pay of some skilled laborers exceeded 
that of many professionals, including teachers, doctors, and en- 
gineers, because Marxism- Leninism exalted manual work. Despite 
earning less money, however, professionals generally had higher 
social status than manual workers. The pay for many occupations 
was set low by government planners, requiring two incomes to 
maintain a family's living standard that often was at the poverty 



lxv 



level. In contrast, the members of the elite of Soviet society not 
only received substantially higher salaries but also had access to 
special food and consumer goods stores, better housing and health 
care, and increased educational opportunities. 

Women, although according to the Constitution the equal of men, 
were treated as if they were of a political, economic, and social status 
that was inferior to men. The vast majority of women worked be- 
cause of economic necessity, but most often in low-paying posi- 
tions. They endured the greater share of the burden of living in 
a country where the regime placed superpower military status above 
citizens' needs and desires for adequate housing, food, clothing, 
and other consumer goods. Crowded living quarters, often with 
shared bathrooms and kitchens that usually lacked modern kitchen 
appliances made life difficult. Waiting in long lines every day to 
purchase food and other essentials was another burden borne mostly 
by women, who received little assistance from their spouses and 
even less from the male-dominated society and the socialist regime. 
Although given some special benefits, including generous mater- 
nity and child care leave by the government, Soviet women were 
generally overburdened. As a consequence of the domestic stresses, 
the Soviet Union had high rates of abortion, alcoholism, and di- 
vorce, most evident among the Slavic nationalities. 

The Soviet Union comprised more than 100 nationalities, twenty- 
two of which had populations of over 1 million. The Russian na- 
tionality made up only about 51 percent of the total population, 
according to the 1989 census, but the two other East Slavic na- 
tionalities — the Belorussians and the Ukrainians — together con- 
stituted about another 23 percent of the population. Some of the 
cultural and linguistic diversity of the Soviet nationalities could 
be seen when contrasting the North European heritage of the 
Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians with the Mongol, Persian, 
and Turkic roots of the Central Asian Kazakhs, Kirgiz, Tadzhiks, 
Turkmens, and Uzbeks. The cultures and languages of the three 
major nationalities of the Caucasus region — the Armenians, Azer- 
baydzhanis, and Georgians — were significantly different from each 
other as well as from the other nationalities. These fourteen 
nationalities, together with the Moldavians, each had union republic 
status. Many other nationalities were granted "autonomous" status 
in territorial and administrative subdivisions (i.e., autonomous 
republics, autonomous oblasts, and autonomous okruga — see Glos- 
sary). It should be noted, however, that despite the semblance of 
autonomy, real political and economic power was retained in 
Moscow, and the Russians remained, in mid-1991, the domi- 
nant nationality in the political and economic life of the Soviet 

lxvi 



Union. It should also be noted that some nationalities were brought 
into the Soviet Union under duress, and others were annexed by 
force by its predecessor, the Russian Empire. 

Several of the non-Russian nationalities formally objected to 
being part of the communist-controlled Soviet Union and had long 
viewed Russians as oppressors. In addition, many of the non- 
Russian peoples had had serious and longstanding disagreements 
and rivalries with neighboring peoples of other nationalities. Partly 
as a defense against criticism by non-Russian nationalities, Rus- 
sians in some areas began to reassert their own nationality, but 
in other areas they felt compelled to leave their homes in some non- 
Russian republics because of anti-Russian sentiments. Successive 
Soviet regimes, including that of Gorbachev until the late 1980s, 
maintained that all peoples of the Soviet Union lived harmoniously 
and were content with their circumstances. When Gorbachev in- 
itiated reforms that relaxed the regime's system of constraints, the 
latent discontent erupted into disturbances and violence, result- 
ing in hundreds of deaths. 

Each nationality, having its own history, language, and culture, 
attempted to preserve its distinctive heritage and, in most cases, 
was permitted by the government to provide language instruction 
for children to that end. Nevertheless, instruction in Russian was 
also required, and Russian was the official language of the Soviet 
regime, although only a small percentage of non-Russians spoke 
and read Russian fluently. The religions of the various nationali- 
ties were almost universally repressed by the official antireligious 
policies of successive regimes. Although Gorbachev authorized the 
reopening of many churches in 1989 and 1990, most churches, 
mosques, and synagogues remained closed. Nevertheless, by mid- 
1991 religion was playing an increasingly significant role in the 
lives of some of the people. 

An important domestic reform put forward by Gorbachev was 
demokratizatsiia, the attempt to introduce greater participation by 
citizens, including younger party members, in the political process. 
Having risen to leadership in the Soviet state through the party, 
Gorbachev attempted to use the party to implement his reform pro- 
gram. Since 1917 the party had held, in fact, the "leading and 
guiding role in Soviet society," but that role was formally abolished 
in March 1991 when the Supreme Soviet, as part of its program 
of demokratizatsiia, amended the Constitution and revised Article 
6 to permit other parties to exist. The party thereby lost the legal 
basis for its authority over the government, economy, and society 
throughout the Soviet Union. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, 
even before the constitutional change, the CPSU's effectiveness 



lxvii 



in leading the Soviet Union appeared, to most observers, to have 
diminished markedly. The party had been unable to implement 
reform or make the Marxist-Leninist system function effectively 
on a continuing basis. This systemic failure, however, had not led 
to a complete renunciation of the underlying socialist ideology by 
mid- 1991. This fact led many party members to resign in protest 
against the party's failure to promote genuine change, or in ac- 
knowledgment of the declining relevance of the party, or as a renun- 
ciation of Marxism-Leninism as a viable doctrine, or, perhaps, in 
recognition of the fact that continued membership could be 
detrimental to their future careers. 

Among the many prominent party members who had resigned 
by mid- 1991 were three former Politburo members: Boris N. Yelt- 
sin, formerly also the Moscow party secretary; Eduard A. Shevard- 
nadze, formerly also the minister of foreign affairs; and Aleksandr N. 
Iakovlev, formerly also a member of the CPSU Secretariat. The 
latter two were long-term, close advisers to Gorbachev. Yeltsin, how- 
ever, was probably the most politically powerful of the former party 
members. He had been picked by Gorbachev for the Moscow post 
in 1985 but angered the party hierarchy with his outspoken criti- 
cism of the party and was dismissed from both that post and the 
Politburo in 1987. In a remarkable political comeback, however, 
Yeltsin was elected to the Congress of People's Deputies in 1989 
and in 1990 was elected chairman of the supreme soviet of the Rus- 
sian Republic, by far the largest and most important of the fifteen 
constituent republics of the Soviet Union. But his most significant 
victory came in June 1991, when he was elected to the newly created 
position of president of the Russian Republic by a majority of 57 
percent of the voters in the Russian Republic in a direct, popular 
election. Meanwhile, the popularity of Gorbachev among Soviet 
citizens had fallen to less than 10 percent, according to a Soviet 
poll. Yeltsin's popularity among citizens of the Russian Republic 
was apparently based, in part, on his political agenda, which in- 
cluded establishing a market economy with private property rights 
and denationalizing government-owned enterprises; shifting more 
decision-making power from the central authorities to the repub- 
lics; and reducing the power of the party, the size of the armed 
forces, and the influence of the Committee for State Security 
(Komitet gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti — KGB). This ambitious 
agenda could not be accomplished quickly or easily under the best 
of circumstances, and some intellectuals and other Soviet citizens 
mistrusted Yeltsin as a leader. 

Despite the CPSU's loss of many members — both prominent 
and rank-and-file members — and despite its loss of constitutional 



lxviii 



exclusivity and its failure to lead the country effectively, the party 
remained the Soviet Union's major political force and bastion of 
reaction in mid- 1991. No longer the monolithic, disciplined power 
it had once been and often divided along nationality lines, the party 
retained as members, however, a large percentage of the male popu- 
lation over the age of thirty and having at least ten years of educa- 
tion, the segment of the population that had traditionally made 
the decisions and managed the affairs of the country. They and 
the party as a whole appeared to give Gorbachev their support. 
The party's de facto power appeared strong in the central govern- 
ment bureaucracy, in most city governments, in some republic 
governments, and in many administrative subdivisions but was 
weak in certain other republics and administrative subdivisions. 
Party members generally remained in charge of the Soviet govern- 
ment's controlled economy from the central planning organs and 
the military-industrial complex to the individual enterprises. And 
party members remained in positions of responsibility in the trans- 
portation, communications, agriculture, education, mass media, 
legal, and judicial systems. The party's power was weakest among 
the non-Russian nationalities, where some party leaders were 
prompted to advocate national sovereignty in an effort to main- 
tain their positions. Significantly, the party was strongest among 
the leadership of the armed forces, the KGB, and the Ministry of 
Internal Affairs (Ministerstvo vnutrennykh del — MVD). These 
organs of party power — and their predecessor organizations — had 
been used to maintain the party's preeminence since the Bolshevik 
Revolution, and in mid- 1991 the party continued to use them. 

During the late 1980s, the popular elections that Gorbachev had 
instigated produced revitalized legislative bodies that could com- 
pete with the party for power at the all-union, republic, and lower 
levels of government. These elections spurred millions of ordinary 
citizens to become more politically involved than they had ever been 
and prompted many of their elected representatives to challenge 
party officials and other central authorities. Politically active in- 
dividuals, including CPSU members, former prisoners in the Gulag 
(see Glossary), and citizens motivated by a variety of concerns 
created or joined disparate political action groups. For the most 
part, these groups represented liberal and democratic viewpoints, 
particularly in urban areas such as Moscow and Leningrad, or na- 
tionality interests in the non-Russian republics and administrative 
subdivisions. But conservative, reactionary, and pro-Russian groups 
also sprang up. The various liberal groups often opposed the CPSU 
and the central authorities but lacked positive, unifying goals and 
programs, as well as practical experience in democracy's way of 



lxix 



coalition building, compromise, and the rule of law. They strug- 
gled to form political parties with broadened geographical and popu- 
lar bases. But without the extraordinary financing, organization, 
communications, and material support retained by the CPSU, the 
emergent political groups found the competition especially difficult. 

Political leaders in all fifteen republics asserted the precedence 
of their republics' laws over those of the central government and 
demanded control over their own natural resources, agricultural 
products, and industrial output. Leaders of several republics pro- 
claimed complete independence, national sovereignty, and separa- 
tion from the Soviet Union. Within many of the republics, however, 
officials of various minority nationalities in administrative sub- 
divisions sometimes proclaimed their subdivision's independence 
from their republics or passed laws contradictory to the laws of 
higher legislative or executive bodies. Hence the Constitution, Gor- 
bachev's decrees, and laws passed by the Supreme Soviet, by the 
supreme Soviets of the republics, or by the Soviets (see Glossary) 
of the various subdivisions were often disobeyed with impunity. 

This so-called "war of laws" among the legislative and execu- 
tive bodies at various levels contributed to the forging of an agree- 
ment between Gorbachev and the leaders of nine of the fifteen 
republics in April 1991. This agreement, which Yeltsin played a 
key role in formulating, promised that the central government would 
permit the republics to have more economic and political auton- 
omy and that the republics would fulfill their economic and financial 
obligations to Moscow. At the time of the agreement, Gorbachev 
and Yeltsin and the eight other republic leaders endorsed, in prin- 
ciple, a revised draft of a new treaty, which would in effect reestab- 
lish the Soviet Union on a different basis from the original union 
treaty of 1922. The republics that did not sign the agreement were 
to be excluded from its provisions. 

The six republics refusing to join the agreement between Gor- 
bachev and the nine republics were the Armenian, Estonian, 
Georgian, Latvian, Lithuanian, and Moldavian republics. In these 
republics, the people had elected to their republic legislatures 
representatives who, for the most part, were not CPSU members 
but rather were advocates of the primacy of their nationality vis- 
a-vis the central regime in Moscow. The leaders of these republics 
indicated that they did not wish to be part of the Soviet Union and 
were attempting to sever their political ties with it and establish 
themselves as independent countries. The six republics together 
constituted about 1.4 percent of the territory and about 7.2 per- 
cent of the population of the Soviet Union. 



Ixx 



Meanwhile, the Gorbachev regime continued its efforts to finalize 
a new union treaty that would replace the 1922 union treaty. Dur- 
ing 1990 the Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian republics elected 
noncommunist governments. The elected representatives voted for 
independence from the Soviet Union and sought the same indepen- 
dent status that they had had before being absorbed into the Soviet 
Union in 1940. (It should be noted that the United States never 
recognized the incorporation of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania into 
the Soviet Union.) Gorbachev and the Supreme Soviet did not 
recognize the independence of the three Baltic states, and the Soviet 
armed forces were employed to disrupt their independence drives. 
It is likely that separation of the three republics was also hindered, 
in part, because their economies were closely intertwined with those 
of the other republics, particularly with that of the Russian Re- 
public. 

In March 1990, the regime created the office of the presidency 
in accordance with changes in the Constitution. The president and 
vice president were supposed to be elected by direct popular vote, 
but, by special exception, Gorbachev and Gennadii I. Ianaev were 
elected as the first president and vice president, respectively, by 
vote of the Congress of People's Deputies. The president, who could 
serve a maximum of two five-year terms, was authorized by the 
changes in the Constitution to appoint and remove high-level 
government officials; veto laws and suspend orders of the Council 
of Ministers; and declare martial law or a state of emergency, subject 
to approval by a two-thirds majority of the Supreme Soviet. 

Also created in 1990 were two organizations designed to sup- 
port the presidency. The new Presidential Council was given re- 
sponsibility for implementing foreign and domestic policies and for 
ensuring the country's security. The new Council of the Federa- 
tion, which was headed by the president of the Soviet Union and 
consisted also of the ' ' supreme state official from each of the fifteen 
constituent republics," had duties that included developing ways 
to implement a nationalities policy, recommending to the Supreme 
Soviet solutions for interethnic problems, and ensuring that the 
union republics complied with international treaties. The creation 
of the presidency with its two supporting bodies was seen by some 
Western observers as helping Gorbachev to provide his regime with 
a renewed political power that was based on constitutionally es- 
tablished government organs rather than on the CPSU, the tradi- 
tional source of political power. 

In November 1990, Gorbachev proposed the establishment of 
several other new bodies (all directly subordinate to him) designed 
to strengthen the executive branch of the government. The new 



lxxi 



bodies included the Cabinet of Ministers (replacing the Council 
of Ministers), the Security Council, and the Coordinating Agency 
for the Supervision of Law and Order. The Presidential Council 
was dissolved, and its functions were given to the Council of the 
Federation, which was designated the chief policy-making organ 
in the country. These administrative changes appeared to some 
analysts to be an attempt by Gorbachev to recover the authority 
and control that his regime had lost during conflicts with several 
secessionist republics, as well as during disputes with radical and 
conservative opponents of his reforms. Gorbachev was, in the view 
of some analysts, also attempting to counter calls for his resigna- 
tion for failing to initiate and implement measures that would cure 
the country's economic and political ills. 

One of Gorbachev's main instruments in his attempt to improve 
the country's condition was his policy of glasnost'. Through this 
policy, he used the mass media to arouse the people who would 
help change the way the bureaucratic system functioned. He and 
all prior leaders of the Soviet Union had used the mass media and 
artistic expression to help govern the people and direct the soci- 
ety's course. Politicizing the mass media and the arts served not 
only to secure the regime's power but also furthered the role of 
the CPSU and the dominance of Marxism-Leninism (see Glossary) 
in the social, cultural, and economic life of the country. In the late 
1980s, however, Soviet mass media and the arts became part of 
the revolution in information technologies that swept the globe and 
could not be sealed off from the Soviet Union. The regime needed 
those same technologies to compete with the West and to prevent 
falling further behind economically and technologically. 

In the late 1980s, the Soviet regimes, first that of Andropov and 
then that of Gorbachev, relaxed their monopoly on the press and 
modern communications technology and eased the strictures of so- 
cialist realism (see Glossary), thus permitting open discussion of 
many themes previously prohibited. The implementation of the 
policy of glasnost ' made much more information about government 
activities, past and present, accessible to ordinary citizens, who then 
criticized not only the government but also the CPSU and even 
Lenin, the founder of the Soviet state. Editors, journalists, and other 
writers transformed newspapers, journals, and television broad- 
casts into media for investigative reports and lively discussions of 
a wide variety of subjects that had been heavily censored before 
glasnost'. The works of previously banned writers, including Joseph 
Brodsky and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, both exiled winners of the 
Nobel Prize for Literature, and such exiled authors as Vasilii 
Aksionov and Vladimir Voinovich, were published in the Soviet 



lxxii 



Union. Thus, the regime began to lose control of the policy of glas- 
nost\ and the censors began to lose control of the mass media. In 
June 1990, the Supreme Soviet passed a law that purportedly sanc- 
tioned freedom of the press, but later that year the regime began 
again to restrict news reporting, particularly on radio and television. 
Still, in mid- 1991 the mass media continued to offer interesting 
news and diverse viewpoints — although some less independent and 
revelatory than they had been in the late 1980s — that were eagerly 
followed by the people. 

Another side effect of Gorbachev's policy of glasnost' was the ex- 
posure and public discussion of the severe degradation and official 
neglect of the environment that had been perpetuated by succes- 
sive regimes in the drive to achieve industrial and national secu- 
rity goals at any price. As a consequence of this neglect, two of 
the twentieth century's worst man-made environmental disasters 
struck the Soviet Union: the Chernobyl' nuclear power plant ac- 
cident, the consequence of an insufficient regard for safety to ob- 
tain increased energy; and the loss of huge amounts of water from 
the Aral Sea. Although the death toll from the Chernobyl' acci- 
dent in 1986 was initially low, millions of people continued to live 
on radioactive land and raise and consume contaminated food. In 
addition to the human costs, cleaning up and repairing the after- 
effects of the accident, which continued to leak radioactive gases 
in 1991, were estimated to cost hundreds of billions of rubles (see 
Glossary) by the year 2000. The other major environmental dis- 
aster was the near destruction of the Aral Sea, whose main sources 
of water were diverted to irrigate arid land for the purpose of rais- 
ing cotton and other crops beginning in 1960. Subsequently, the 
Aral Sea's coast receded sixty kilometers, in places, from its former 
location. Other environmental problems included the severe pol- 
lution of rivers, lakes, and the air resulting from the direct dis- 
charge of pollutants, particularly in the European part of the Soviet 
Union. 

In the late 1980s, environmental concern spurred the formation 
of genuine grass-roots ecology groups that pressed the authorities 
to remedy the harmful conditions. Often these groups were sup- 
ported by or were merged with nationality groups advocating in- 
creased self-determination or independence but nevertheless had 
little political power. Despite the efforts of the grass-roots groups, 
resolving the Soviet Union's many environmental problems, in the 
view of many Western specialists, will be costly and long-term. The 
Gorbachev regime as of mid- 1991 had not redirected its economic 
policies regarding industrial and agricultural production, resource 
extraction, and consumption to provide adequate protection for 
the environment. 



Ixxiii 



Another effect of glasnost ' was the official acknowledgment of past 
civil and human rights abuses and the marked improvement in peo- 
ple' s rights during Gorbachev's regime. The advancement of civil 
and human rights for the people of the Soviet Union was coura- 
geously sought by Andrei Sakharov, a winner of the Nobel Prize 
for Peace in 1975, who moved from internal exile in Gor'kiy to 
membership in the Congress of People's Deputies in Moscow be- 
fore his death in December 1989. Freedom of speech and the press 
grew enormously after censorship was officially abolished. Free- 
dom to assemble peacefully for political purposes, with or without 
government authorization, was tested frequentiy, generally without 
serious incident. (In January 1991, however, armed Soviet troops 
on two different occasions reportedly killed or wounded several 
dozen unarmed demonstrators occupying buildings in the Latvian 
and Lithuanian republics.) Political rights of individuals were en- 
hanced when the Supreme Soviet approved legal authority for a 
multiparty system. But in 1991 the emerging political groups were 
too fragmented and weak to seriously challenge the power of the 
CPSU except in cities such as Leningrad and Moscow and in several 
of the republics' legislatures. In 1990 the regime expanded the right 
of citizens to emigrate. About 180,000 Jews departed for Israel, 
150,000 Germans departed for a united Germany, and about 55,000 
citizens emigrated to the United States. And, finally, independent 
trade unions were allowed to form, and strikes, made legal in 1989, 
were permitted by the regime, even one involving over 600,000 
miners in several areas of the Soviet Union in 1990. 

In the late 1980s, the Gorbachev regime released many prisoners 
of conscience (persons imprisoned for their political or religious 
beliefs) from imprisonment in the Gulag, from internal exile, and 
from psychiatric hospitals. Although authorities could still legally 
detain and arrest people without warrants, political killings, dis- 
appearances, or psychiatric hospitalizations for political or religious 
beliefs were rare. Nevertheless, human rights practices in the Soviet 
Union remained in transition in 1991. 

Of major concern to successive Soviet regimes was the system 
of internal security, which in 1991 consisted primarily of the KGB 
and the MVD. They had been powerful tools for ferreting out and 
suppressing political and other internal threats to rule by the CPSU. 
The party always considered the KGB its most vital arm and main- 
tained the closest supervision and control over it. The party con- 
trolled the KGB and MVD by approving personnel appointments 
through the nomenklatura (see Glossary) system and by exercising 
general oversight to ensure that party directives were followed. Party 
control was also exerted specifically and individually because all 



lxxiv 



KGB officers and the majority of M VD officers were members of 
the CPSU. Party membership subjected them to the norms of 
democratic centralism (see Glossary) and party discipline. 

Internal security forces, particularly the KGB, had broad author- 
ity to employ severe and sometimes violent methods against the 
Soviet people while enforcing the regime's directives and thereby 
preserving the party's dominant role in the Soviet Union. In mid- 
1991 the KGB, under Vladimir A. Kriuchkov, and the MVD, 
under Boris K. Pugo beginning in October 1990, continued to give 
their loyalty and substantial support to the party. Thus, the inter- 
nal security organs continued to oppose radical change and re- 
mained a significant, and perhaps immobilizing, threat to some 
citizens advocating substantial economic and political reform. At 
the same time, the internal security organs, particularly the KGB, 
continued to take advantage of the party's need for their vital sup- 
port by exerting influence on the party's policies and the regime's 
decisions. 

Like the KGB and MVD, the armed forces traditionally were 
loyal to the party and beneficiaries of the party's decisions. Con- 
trol of the armed forces by the party was exercised primarily through 
the military leaders, the overwhelming majority of whom were loyal 
party members and followers of Marxism- Leninism. The armed 
forces were controlled by the party through networks of uniformed 
party representatives and covert informers who reported to the 
CPSU. Most of the middle and junior grade officers, although prob- 
ably members of the CPSU or its youth affiliate, the Komsomol 
(see Glossary), were, in the view of some Western observers, less 
bound to party doctrine than were the senior military leaders. The 
vast majority of the military rank and file, however, were not af- 
filiated with the party and resented the covert informers in their 
midst and the political indoctrination they endured. 

The Soviet Union's military establishment was the justification 
for its international ranking as a superpower. With the world's larg- 
est military establishment — nearly 6 million people in uniform and 
a large arsenal of nuclear missiles — the Soviet Union's superpower 
status appeared justified on a military, if not on an economic, basis. 
The military establishment consisted not only of the armed forces 
but also of the internal security forces and an extensive military- 
industrial complex, all of which had priority use of human and eco- 
nomic resources. Decisions regarding the use of most human and 
material economic resources continued to be made by party mem- 
bers. The majority of the citizens, however, were dissatisfied with 
the party's decision-making role and were not in favor of Gor- 
bachev's reform efforts. But the majority of the people were not 



lxxv 



allowed to choose alternative national leadership and appeared un- 
willing to exert their influence to radically change the course of 
events out of fear of the armed forces, and perhaps of civil war. 

The armed forces consisted of the five armed services (Strategic 
Rocket Forces, Ground Forces, Air Forces, Air Defense Forces, 
and Naval Forces), extensive support and rear service organiza- 
tions, and specialized and paramilitary forces, such as the Airborne 
Troops, the Internal Troops of the MVD, and the Border Troops 
of the KGB. The Internal Troops and the Border Troops had mili- 
tary equipment, organization, training, and missions. The most 
strategically significant of the five armed services were the Stra- 
tegic Rocket Forces, whose main purpose was to attack an oppo- 
nent's nuclear weapons, military facilities, and industry with nuclear 
missiles. The Ground Forces, the largest and most prestigious of 
the armed services, were also important, in part because the senior 
officers typically held high-level positions in the Ministry of Defense 
and the General Staff of the Armed Forces. Of the five armed ser- 
vices, the Strategic Rocket Forces in mid- 1991 maintained the capa- 
bility of destroying targets in the United States and elsewhere, and 
the Ground Forces continued to have the world's largest numbers 
of tanks, artillery pieces, and tactical nuclear weapons. 

The armed forces were not without internal problems, however. 
The combat losses sustained in Afghanistan and the withdrawal 
without victory had a profound effect on the armed forces and tar- 
nished their image in the eyes of the party and the society as a whole. 
The armed forces were also disturbed by mounting nationality 
problems, including the refusal of many non-Russian conscripts 
to report for induction, the continuing interethnic conflicts among 
conscripts, and the demographic trend in which non-Russians were 
likely to outnumber Russians in the biannual conscript inductions. 
The Soviet armed forces also lacked a well-trained, experienced, 
and stable noncommissioned officer corps, such as that forming 
the basis of many Western armies. Gorbachev's announcement in 
1988 of a unilateral reduction of 500,000 officers and men from 
the armed forces and his announced cutbacks in the armed forces' 
share of the government budget were not received with enthusiasm 
by the military hierarchy. 

The doctrine, structure, and mission of the Soviet armed forces 
were based on the theories of Marxism- Leninism. One of these the- 
ories rested on the principle, formulated by the nineteenth-century 
Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, that war is a con- 
tinuation of politics and that an aim of war is the attainment of mili- 
tary victory. Marxism- Leninism added that military victory can 
accelerate the victory of the world socialist system (see Glossary). 



lxxvi 



Marxism-Leninism also provided the theoretical basis for Soviet 
military science and for the tactical operations of military units. 
In practice, Marxism- Leninism was interpreted and applied solely 
by the CPSU, which closely monitored military leaders' adherence 
to party policies and directives. Thus, when Gorbachev charac- 
terized Marxism-Leninism as an outdated dogma in July 1991 and 
called on the CPSU Central Committee to abandon it in favor of 
social democratic principles, military leaders probably were sur- 
prised and dismayed. 

Under the direction of the party, the armed forces were organized 
and equipped mainly to accomplish offensive missions, the suc- 
cess of which were indispensable to victory in war. Although Soviet 
military doctrine was always defensive, according to Soviet lead- 
ers, Western specialists regarded it as offensive in emphasis be- 
cause it stressed offensive strategy, weapons, and forces to achieve 
victory in war. As directed by Gorbachev, however, military leaders 
emphasized the defensive aspects of the doctrine. Gorbachev also 
directed that the military establishment adopt the doctrine of 
''reasonable sufficiency," new to the Soviet Union in the 1980s, 
to facilitate the conversion of portions of the military industrial com- 
plex to support civilian, consumer-oriented requirements. 

With the apparent support of the armed forces, the internal secu- 
rity organs, and the governmental economic bureaucracies, the 
CPSU continued its efforts to control events in the country in 
mid- 1991. Despite its problem-plagued economy and society and 
its altered international situation, the Soviet Union remained one 
of the two most powerful countries in the world. Its size and loca- 
tion, natural resources, industrial capacity, population, and mili- 
tary strength made it of continuing importance. Having large 
quantities of almost all the strategic minerals and large reserves 
of coal, iron ore, natural gas, oil, timber, gold, manganese, and 
other resources, the Soviet Union required little material support 
from beyond its borders. It was self-sufficient in coal, natural gas, 
and oil, the major fuels needed for its extensive industry. Indus- 
trial development had been a keystone of economic policies of all 
Soviet regimes beginning with the Bolshevik Revolution and had 
resulted in a higher percentage of Soviet citizens working in in- 
dustry than in most Western nations. Soviet industrial develop- 
ment, however, always favored heavy industry, for reasons of 
national security and military production. Light industry, which 
mainly produced goods for consumers other than nonmilitary needs, 
such as agriculture, always had low priority. The emphasis on heavy 
industry produced some spectacular successes, particularly with 
regard to the production of large quantities of military equipment 



lxxvii 



and weapons systems. As a result of this emphasis, however, the 
Soviet people had to settle for food, clothing, and housing of gen- 
erally poor quality and insufficient quantity. 

In mid- 1991 the people gave the Gorbachev regime only minimal 
support and were beginning to reject the party's right to rule the 
Soviet Union. Gorbachev, however, continued to proclaim him- 
self a Communist and to align himself with opponents of reform 
on some issues but with advocates of reform on other issues. He 
thus lost the support of almost all the democratic and market- 
oriented reformers and remained acceptable to the hard-line op- 
ponents of reform mainly because they lacked an alternative lead- 
er. Gorbachev apparently could not permanently join either the 
reformers or their opponents, but neither could he allow either group 
to gain continuing supremacy because his role as the arbiter of con- 
flicting views would be unnecessary. His zigzags perhaps enabled 
him to remain in a position of power, but he continued to lose ef- 
fectiveness as the director of major events in the country and there- 
fore his relevance as a leader and reformer. His six years of historic 
political reform opened the Soviet Union to fundamental change. 
The reform effort, however, was not accompanied by significant 
changes in the oarty's ideology or the government's functions, and 
the irresolute and sporadic attempts to transform the centrally con- 
trolled economy into a market-based system had had little real suc- 
cess. Meanwhile, the country continued in its chaotic turmoil as 
the economy worsened, the regime became weaker, and several 
of the republics became more insistent on their national indepen- 
dence. The Soviet Union remained in flux and unpredictable. 

August 16, 1991 



Early in the morning of August 19, 1991 , events began to occur 
that would have a greater historical impact than the Bolshevik Revo- 
lution of 1917, according to George F. Kennan, one of America's 
foremost specialists on the Soviet Union. The events began when 
Soviet radio and television broadcasts announced that Gorbachev, 
who was vacationing in Crimea, had been replaced by a com- 
mittee of high-ranking party and government officials because "ill 
health" prevented him from performing his presidential duties 
at a time when the country faced "fatal dangers." The officials, 
who called themselves the State Committee for the State of Emer- 
gency, placed themselves in charge of the country and put Gor- 
bachev under house arrest. The committee was headed by the vice 



lxxviii 



president of the Soviet Union, Gennadii I. Ianaev, who was named 
acting president, and included the chairman of the KGB, Vladimir 
A. Kriuchkov; the minister of internal affairs, Boris K. Pugo; the 
minister of defense, Dmitrii T. Iazov; and the chairman of the Cabi- 
net of Ministers, Valentin Pavlov. Anatolii I. Luk'ianov, the chair- 
man of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, supported the 
committee, as did other CPSU leaders in the government, armed 
forces, internal security forces, and military-industrial complex. 
The committee issued several decrees that suspended democratic 
political organizations; promised housing improvements and the 
freezing or reduction of prices on some food items; banned publi- 
cation of several newspapers and journals; forbade labor strikes 
and public gatherings; and declared martial law in Moscow. In 
an appeal to the people, Ianaev pledged to ensure the territorial 
integrity of the Soviet Union and indicated that the new union 
treaty, which was scheduled to be signed on August 20, would be 
reevaluated before final acceptance. In an appeal to foreign lead- 
ers, Ianaev stated that treaties and other international agreements 
signed by the Soviet Union would be upheld by the committee, 
but he warned against attempts by foreign governments to change 
Soviet boundaries. 

The announcements by the leaders of the coup d'etat brought 
immediate reactions, mostly negative. In Moscow crowds of peo- 
ple protested in the streets and eventually confronted tanks of the 
armed forces in defense of the building housing the Russian Repub- 
lic's supreme soviet. Tens of thousands of people rallied around 
Yeltsin, who urged them to continue resisting the coup and asked 
the troops not to fire on fellow citizens. Masses of people in many 
other Soviet cities demonstrated against the coup, and leaders of 
most of the republics denounced the coup. On the second day of 
the coup, three people were killed attempting to defend the supreme 
soviet building against tanks. Soviet troops occupied radio and tele- 
vision facilities in the Estonian and Lithuanian republics, and the 
Estonian and Lithuanian legislatures declared immediate secession 
from the Soviet Union. President Bush and other foreign leaders 
voiced strong opposition to the coup, which they termed "illegal," 
and called for the organizers to restore Gorbachev to power. 

Firm opposition from the Soviet people, Yeltsin and other republic 
leaders, and international figures was not the only problem facing 
the initiators of the coup. Some of the armed forces defected to the op- 
position, and some others — for example, General Evgenii Shaposhni- 
kov, commander in chief of the Air Forces, and Lieutenant Gen- 
eral Pavel Grachev, commander of the Airborne Troops — refused 
to obey the orders to deploy. Many other military leaders, as well 



lxxix 



as many senior members of the party, government, and media, 
apparently took no overt stand but waited to see if the coup was 
likely to succeed. 

Early on the third day, the coup collapsed. The committee dis- 
banded, and the Ministry of Defense directed all troops to leave 
Moscow. The Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union formally re- 
instated Gorbachev as president, and he returned to Moscow 
from Crimea. Gorbachev returned to find that the political envi- 
ronment in Moscow and in many other places in the Soviet Union 
was radically different from the one that had existed before the coup 
attempt. At the urging of Yeltsin, Gorbachev, who had origin- 
ally replaced coup members with their close subordinates, ap- 
pointed persons more acceptable to the reformers. Shaposhnikov 
was appointed minister of defense, Vadim V. Bakatin the chair- 
man of the KGB, and Viktor Barannikov the minister of internal 
affairs. 

The failed coup and the events immediately following it repre- 
sented a historic turning point for many reasons. The CPSU, which 
was a main bond linking the coup leaders, was thrown into fur- 
ther disarray, and it, together with the party-dominated central 
government, v/as seriously discredited. The position of conserva- 
tive and reactionary leaders, who were mainly party members, was 
weakened relative to that of the advocates of substantial political 
and economic reform. In addition, Gorbachev, who had appointed 
or approved the appointment of the coup leaders and failed to fore- 
stall the coup, was diminished politically. Although he rejected col- 
laborating with the coup leaders, Gorbachev fully advocated neither 
democracy nor a free-market economy and was viewed by many 
observers as a figure of mainly historical importance. Yeltsin, who 
had publicly defied the coup leaders, rallied the people to resist, 
and faced the tanks, used his position as the popularly elected presi- 
dent of the Russian Republic and his forceful personality to change 
the course of events. He altered Gorbachev's appointments, made 
economic and political agreements affecting the whole country, and 
revised the proposed new union treaty. 

Although the precise roles that the armed forces, KGB, and MVD 
took during the coup were unclear, some people in these organs failed 
to respond to manipulation by the party apparatchiks (see Glossary). 
Some elements of the armed services, for example, opted not to sup- 
port the coup. The vast majority of the armed forces, KGB, and 
MVD, however, were not actively involved in the coup and there- 
fore did not attempt to influence the course of events. These organs 
traditionally had opposed change, and their considerable power 



lxxx 



remained available for commitment in a future struggle. The po- 
sitions of the nationalities seeking independence, sovereignty, and 
secession was also strengthened as a result of the failure of the coup. 
Ten of the fifteen republics declared or reaffirmed their indepen- 
dence. The United States, as well as the European Community, 
recognized Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania as separate and indepen- 
dent states. Finally, advocates of reform, in general, and democratic 
reform, in particular, were seen as ascendant by some Western ob- 
servers, as a result of the coup. But perhaps equally as important, 
the advocates began to include not only members of the intelligentsia 
but also tens of thousands of ordinary citizens. Their activism helped 
defeat the coup, and it was possible they would be encouraged to 
participate in the democratic movement and thus help alter their 
political condition. 

On August 24, 1991, the people received further encouragement 
when an evening television news program announced that Gor- 
bachev had resigned as CPSU general secretary. Also announced 
was a plea from Gorbachev for the CPSU Central Committee to 
disband itself. On the same day, Gorbachev decreed that " Soviets 
of people's deputies" should seize CPSU property and decide on 
its future use in accordance with Soviet law and the laws of the 
republics. In another decree, Gorbachev directed that political par- 
ties and political organizations must cease activities in the armed 
forces, MVD, KGB, and in the central government bureaucracy. 
Decrees limiting party activities had been issued earlier by Yeltsin 
for the Russian Republic and by some other republic leaders, but 
those decrees had generally not been carried out. Gorbachev did 
not quit the party, but although neither he nor Yeltsin outlawed 
it entirely, the people reacted as if the reign of the party had ended. 
They toppled numerous statues of Lenin and other party leaders, 
assaulted party members, and attempted to take over party build- 
ings in several cities. The people's anger at the party erupted not 
only because of the coup attempt but because of the years of 
corruption, deceit, and tyranny that party members had inflicted 
on them in the exercise of near total power. Meanwhile, the Party 
Control Committee expelled the coup leaders from the party and 
claimed that the party as a whole should not be condemned for 
the illegal actions of a few "adventurers." 

On September 5, 1991, perhaps the most significant aftereffect 
of the failed coup occurred: the Congress of People's Deputies, after 
being given an ultimatum by Gorbachev, dissolved both itself and 
the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, after voting to transfer 
state power to a transitional government. The transitional govern- 
ment, which was largely controlled by the republics, was designed 
to rule until a new constitution and a new union treaty could be 



lxxxi 



prepared and approved. It consisted of the State Council, a new 
bicameral Supreme Soviet, and the Interrepublican Economic Com- 
mittee. The State Council, with Gorbachev as the head, had as 
members the leaders of the republics participating in the new 
"voluntary" union. The State Council acted as the collective ex- 
ecutive, and its responsibilities included foreign affairs, national 
defense, and internal security. The Interrepublican Economic Com- 
mittee, with members chosen by the republics, was responsible for 
coordinating the economic relations of the republics and the 
management of the national economy. Gorbachev chose the com- 
mittee chairman with approval of the State Council. In one of its 
first acts, the State Council recognized the complete independence 
of the former Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian republics. 

By successfully withstanding a coup and instituting a transitional 
government, Gorbachev once again displayed his masterful talent 
for tactical improvisation and political survival. Nevertheless, the 
political situation in the former Union of Soviet Socialist Repub- 
lics was unstable, and the economy continued to worsen. Most of 
the people were apprehensive about their future. 



September 7, 1991 Raymond E. Zickel 



lxxxii 



Chapter 1. Historical Setting: Early History to 1917 



Icon, Mother of God (Georgian) 



THE SOVIET UNION is inhabited by many nationalities with 
complex origins and different histories. Its historical roots, however, 
are chiefly those of the East Slavs, who evolved into the Russian, 
Ukrainian, and Belorussian peoples. The major pre- Soviet politi- 
cal formations of the East Slavs were, in order, medieval Kievan 
Rus', Muscovy, and the Russian Empire. Three other states — 
Poland, Lithuania, and the Mongol Empire — also played crucial 
roles in the historical development of the Soviet Union. 

The first East Slavic state, Kievan Rus', emerged along the 
Dnepr River Valley, where it controlled the trade route between 
Scandinavia and the Byzantine Empire. By adopting Christianity 
from Constantinople, Kievan Rus' began a synthesis of Byzan- 
tine and Slavic cultures. Kievan Rus' was the collective posses- 
sion of a princely family, a fact that led to armed struggles between 
princes and ultimately to the territorial disintegration of the state. 
Conquest by the Mongols was the final blow, and subsequently 
a number of states claimed to be heirs of Kievan Rus' . One of these 
was Muscovy, located on the northeastern periphery of Kievan Rus' 
and populated primarily by Russians. Muscovy gradually domi- 
nated neighboring territories and expanded into the Russian 
Empire. 

The historical characteristics that emerged in Muscovy were to 
affect both Russia and the Soviet Union. One such characteristic 
was the state's dominance over the individual. Mongol, Byzan- 
tine, and native Russian roots all contributed to what was referred 
to as Russian autocracy: the idea that Russian rulers, or tsars, were 
unlimited in their power. All institutions, including the Russian 
Orthodox Church, were subordinated to the state and the autocrat. 
The idea of autocracy survived until the fall of the last tsar. 

Continual territorial expansion was another characteristic of Rus- 
sian history. Beginning with Muscovy's "gathering of the Rus- 
sian lands," expansion soon went beyond ethnically Russian areas. 
As a result, Muscovy developed into the huge Russian Empire, 
eventually stretching from the border with Poland to the Pacific 
Ocean. Because of its size and military might, Russia became a 
major power, but acquisition of non-Russian lands and peoples 
posed continuing nationality problems. 

Expansion westward forced Russia to face the perennial ques- 
tions of its backwardness and its relationship to the West. Muscovy 
had grown in isolation from the West, but Russia had to adopt 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Western technology to compete militarily in Europe. Thus, Peter 
the Great attempted to modernize the country, as did subsequent 
rulers who struggled, largely unsuccessfully, to raise Russia to Euro- 
pean levels of technology and productivity. With the acquisition 
of technology came Western cultural and intellectual currents that 
disrupted the development of an independent Russian culture. 
Native and foreign cultural values were often in contention, and 
questions of Russia's relationship to the West became an endur- 
ing obsession of Russian intellectuals. 

Russia's defeat in the Crimean War triggered another attempt 
at modernization, including the emancipation of the serfs — peasants 
bound to the land they tilled. Despite major reforms, agriculture 
remained inefficient, industrialization proceeded haltingly, and new 
problems emerged. In addition to masses of land-hungry peasants, 
a budding industrial proletariat and a small but important group 
of middle-class professionals were becoming dissatisfied. Non- 
Russians, resentful of Russification (see Glossary), struggled for 
autonomy. In response to these continuing problems, successive 
regimes vacillated between repression and reform. The tsars were 
unwilling to give up autocratic rule or to share power. They, their 
supporters, and government bureaucrats became more isolated from 
the rest of society. Intellectuals became more radical, and some 
became professional revolutionaries. 

Despite its internal problems, Russia continued to play a major 
role in international politics. Its defeat in the Russo-Japanese War, 
however, sparked a revolution in 1905. Professionals, workers, 
peasants, non-Russians, and soldiers demanded fundamental re- 
forms. Reluctantly, the last tsar granted a limited constitution, but 
for a decade he circumvented it and continued autocratic rule. 

When World War I began, Russian patriotism at first compen- 
sated for the war's disruption and suffering. The government, 
however, proved incompetent in pursuing the war, and as war- 
weariness and revolutionary pressures increased, fewer and fewer 
defended autocracy. 

Emergence of the East Slavs 

Many ethnically diverse peoples migrated onto the East Euro- 
pean Plain, but the East Slavs remained and gradually became 
dominant. Kievan Rus', the first East Slavic state, emerged in the 
late ninth century A.D. and developed a complex and frequendy 
unstable political system. Nonetheless, Kievan Rus' flourished until 
the thirteenth century, when it rapidly declined. A Slavic variant 
of the Eastern Orthodox religion and a synthesis of Byzantine 
and Slavic cultures are among its lasting achievements. The 



4 



Historical Setting: Early History to 1917 

disintegration of Kievan Rus' played a crucial role in the evolu- 
tion of the East Slavs into the Russian, Ukrainian, and Belorussian 
peoples. 

The Peoples of the East European Plain 

Long before the appearance of Kievan Rus', Iranian and other 
peoples lived in the area of the present-day Ukrainian Republic. 
The most famous of these were the Scythians (ca. 600-200 B.C.), 
whose stylized animal jewelry can be seen in museums through- 
out the world. From A.D. 100 to 900, Goths and nomadic Huns, 
Avars, and Magyars passed though this region but left little of last- 
ing import. More significant was the simultaneous spread of the 
Slavs, who were agriculturists and beekeepers, as well as hunters, 
fishers, herders, and trappers. The Slavs demo graphically domi- 
nated the region. 

Little is known of the origins of the Slavs. Philologists and archae- 
ologists have surmised that they settled very early in the Carpathian 
Mountains or in the area of the present-day Belorussian Repub- 
lic. By A.D. 600, they had split linguistically into southern, western, 
and eastern branches. The East Slavs setded along the Dnepr River 
and its tributaries and then spread northward to Lake Ladoga and 
the Neva River Basin, northeastward to the northern Volga River 
region, and westward to the northern Dnestr and western Bug river 
basins. In the eighth and ninth centuries, many of the East Slavic 
tribes paid tribute to the Khazars, a Turkic- speaking people liv- 
ing in the southern Volga and Caucasus regions. 

The East Slavs and the Varangians 

By the ninth century, Scandinavian warriors and merchants, 
called Varangians, had penetrated the East Slavic regions. Accord- 
ing to the earliest chronicle of Kievan Rus', a Varangian named 
Rurik first established himself in Novgorod ca. 860 before mov- 
ing south and extending his authority to Kiev. The chronicle cited 
Rurik as the progenitor of the Rurikid Dynasty. This princely clan 
was to rule in eastern Europe until 1598. Another Varangian, 
named Oleg, moved south from Novgorod, expelled the Khazars 
from Kiev, and founded Kievan Rus' ca. 880. In a period of thirty- 
five years, he subdued the various East Slavic tribes. In 907 he 
led a campaign against Constantinople, and in 91 1 he signed a com- 
mercial treaty with the Byzantine Empire on the basis of equality. 
The new state prospered because it controlled the trade route 
stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea and because it had 
an abundant supply of furs, wax, honey, and slaves for export. 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 




Source: Based on information from David MacKenzie and Michael W. Curran, A History 
of Russia and the Soviet Union, Chicago, 1987, 61. 

Figure 2. The Principalities of Kievan Rus } , 1136 



Historians have debated the role of the Varangians in the estab- 
lishment of Kievan Rus' . Most Russian — and particularly Soviet — 
historians have stressed the Slavic influence in the development 
of the state. Although Slavic tribes had formed their own regional 
entities by 860, the Varangians undoubtedly accelerated the crys- 
tallization of Kievan Rus'. 

The Golden Age of Kiev 

Kiev dominated Kievan Rus' for the next two centuries (see 
fig. 2). The grand prince controlled the lands around Kiev, while 
his theoretically subordinate relatives ruled in other cities and sent 



6 



Historical Setting: Early History to 1917 

him tribute. The zenith of Kievan Rus' came during the reigns 
of Prince Vladimir (978-1015) and Prince Iaroslav the Wise (1019- 
54). Both rulers continued the steady expansion of Kievan Rus', 
begun under Prince Oleg. To enhance his power, Vladimir mar- 
ried the sister of the Byzantine emperor. Iaroslav arranged mar- 
riages for his sister and three daughters to the kings of Poland, 
France, Hungary, and Norway. Vladimir's greatest achievement 
was the Christianization of Kievan Rus', starting in 988, and he 
built the first great edifice of Kievan Rus', the Tithe Church in 
Kiev. Iaroslav promulgated the first East Slavic law code, Ruska 
Pravda (Rus' Justice); built the St. Sofia cathedrals in Kiev and 
Novgorod; patronized native clergy and monasticism; and is said 
to have founded a school system. Kiev's great Monastery of the 
Caves, which functioned in Kievan Rus' as an ecclesiastical acad- 
emy, was developed under Iaroslav 's sons. 

Vladimir's choice of Eastern Orthodoxy reflected his close po- 
litical ties with Constantinople, which dominated the Black Sea and 
hence the Dnepr River trade. His decision had long-range politi- 
cal, cultural, and religious consequences. The Eastern Orthodox 
Church had a liturgy written in Cyrillic (see Glossary) and a cor- 
pus of translations, which had been produced earlier for the South 
Slavs. This literature facilitated the conversion to Christianity and 
introduced East Slavs to rudimentary Greek philosophy, science, 
and historiography without their having to learn Greek. In con- 
trast, educated people in medieval western and central Europe 
learned Latin. East Slavs learned neither Greek nor Latin and thus 
were isolated from Byzantine culture as well as from the culture 
of their European neighbors to the west. 

Rurik's purported descendants organized Kievan Rus' as their 
shared possession. Princely succession devolved from elder to youn- 
ger brother and from uncle to nephew, as well as from father to 
son. Junior members of the dynasty usually began their princely 
careers by ruling a minor district, then sought to obtain a more 
lucrative principality, and finally competed for the coveted golden 
throne of Kiev. 

In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the princes and their 
retinues — a mixture of Varangian and native Slavic elites plus small 
Finno-Ugric and Turkic elements— dominated the society of Kievan 
Rus'. Leading warriors and officials, who sometimes constituted 
an advisory council, or duma (see Glossary), received income or 
land from the princes in return for their services. The society of 
Kievan Rus' did not develop class institutions, the concept of legal 
reciprocity, or autonomous towns, all of which characterized 
Western feudalism. Nevertheless, urban merchants, artisans, and 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

laborers sometimes exercised political influence through a popu- 
lar assembly, or veche. In some cases, the veche either made agree- 
ments with princes or expelled them and invited others to take their 
places. At the bottom of society was a small stratum of slaves. More 
important were tribute-paying peasants, who gradually came under 
the influence of the Orthodox Church and landlords. As in the rest 
of eastern Europe, the peasants owed labor duty to the princes, 
but the widespread personal serfdom characteristic of western 
Europe did not exist in Kievan Rus'. 

The Rise of Regional Centers 

Kievan Rus' was not able to maintain its position as a powerful 
and prosperous state. Many factors contributed to its decline, 
among them its being an amalgamation of disparate lands held 
together by a ruling clan. As the descendants of Rurik multiplied, 
they identified themselves with regional interests rather than with 
a larger patrimony. The princes fought among themselves, fre- 
quendy forming alliances with Polovtsians, Poles, Hungarians, and 
others. The decline of Kievan Rus' was further accelerated by a 
shift in European trade routes resulting from the Crusades. The 
sacking of Constantinople in 1204 by the Crusaders made the Dnepr 
trade route marginal. As it declined, Kievan Rus' splintered into 
many principalities and several large regional centers. The people 
inhabiting the regional centers evolved into several nationalities: 
Ukrainians in the southeast and southwest, Belorussians in the 
northwest, and Russians in the north and northeast. 

In the north, Novgorod prospered because it controlled trade 
routes from the Volga River to the Baltic Sea. As Kievan Rus' 
declined, Novgorod became more independent. It was ruled by 
a town oligarchy, and major decisions, including the election or 
dismissal of a prince, were made at town meetings. In the twelfth 
century, Novgorod acquired its own archbishop — a sign of its im- 
portance and its political independence. In its political structure 
and mercantile activities, Novgorod, which became a republic in 
1136, resembled the north European towns of the Hanseatic League 
more than the other principalities of Kievan Rus'. 

In the northeast, the territory that eventually became Muscovy 
was colonized by East Slavs who intermingled with the Finno-Ugric 
tribes of the area. The city of Rostov was the oldest center of the 
northeast but was supplanted first by the city of Suzdal' and then 
by the city of Vladimir. By the twelfth century, the combined prin- 
cipality of Vladimir- Suzdal' had become a major power in Kievan 
Rus'. In 1 169 Prince Andrei Bogoliubskii of Vladimir-Suzdal' dealt 
a severe blow to the waning power of the Kievan Rus' capital of 



8 



Historical Setting: Early History to 1917 

Kiev when his armies sacked the city. Prince Andrei installed his 
younger brother in Kiev and continued to rule his realm from the 
city of Suzdal'. Political power had shifted to the northeast. In 1299, 
in the wake of a Mongol invasion, the head of the Orthodox Church, 
the metropolitan of Kiev and all Rus', moved to the city of Vladimir. 
Thus Vladimir- Suzdal', with its increased political power and with 
the metropolitan in residence, acted as a continuator of Kievan 
Rus'. 

The principality of Galicia-Volhynia, which had highly devel- 
oped trade relations with its Polish, Hungarian, and Lithuanian 
neighbors, emerged as another successor to Kievan Rus' in the south- 
west. In the early thirteenth century, Prince Roman Mstislavich 
united the two previously separate principalities, conquered Kiev, 
and assumed the title of grand prince of Kievan Rus'. His son, 
Prince Daniil (1230-64), was the first ruler of Kievan Rus' to ac- 
cept a crown from the Roman papacy, apparently without break- 
ing with Orthodoxy. Early in the fourteenth century, the patriarch 
of the Orthodox Church in Constantinople granted the rulers of 
Galicia-Volhynia a metropolitan to compensate for the Kievan 
metropolitan's move to Vladimir. 

A long and losing struggle against the Mongols, however, as well 
as internal opposition to the prince and foreign intervention, 
weakened Galicia-Volhynia. With the end of the Mstislavich 
Dynasty in the mid- fourteenth century, Galicia-Volhynia ceased 
to exist: Lithuania took Volhynia, and Poland annexed Galicia. 

The Mongol Invasion 

During its fragmentation, Kievan Rus' faced its greatest threat 
from invading Mongols. An army from Kievan Rus', together with 
the Turkic Polovtsians, met a Mongol raiding party in 1223 at the 
Kalka River. The army of Kievan Rus' and its Polovtsian allies 
were soundly defeated. A much larger Mongol force overran much 
of Kievan Rus' in the winter of 1237-38. In 1240 the city of Kiev 
was sacked, and the Mongols moved on to Poland and Hungary. 
Of the principalities of Kievan Rus', only the Republic of Novgorod 
escaped the invasion; it did, however, pay tribute to the Mongols. 
One branch of the Mongols withdrew to Sarai on the lower Volga 
River and established the Golden Horde (see Glossary). From Sarai 
the Golden Horde Mongols controlled Kievan Rus', ruling in- 
directly through its princes and tax collectors. 

The impact of the Mongol invasion was uneven. Some centers, 
Kiev for example, never recovered from the devastation of the in- 
itial attack. The Republic of Novgorod continued to prosper un- 
scathed, and a new entity, the city of Moscow, flourished under 



9 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

the Mongols. Although a Russian army defeated the Golden Horde 
at Kulikovo in 1380, Mongol domination of territories inhabited 
by Russians, and demands for tribute from Russian princes, con- 
tinued until about 1480. In the early fourteenth century, however, 
Lithuania pushed the Mongols from territories inhabited by Ukrain- 
ians and Belorussians and claimed these lands. The Lithuanians 
accepted the Ruthenian language (Ukrainian-Belorussian) as the 
state language and maintained the judicial and administrative prac- 
tices of Kievan Rus' . The grand duke of Lithuania became a con- 
tender for the political and cultural heritage of Kievan Rus'. 
Ultimately, the traditions of Kievan Rus' were superseded by Polish 
influences in Lithuania. 

Historians have debated the long-term impact of Mongol rule 
on Russian and Soviet society. The Mongols have been blamed 
for the destruction of Kievan Rus'; the breakup of an old 4 'Rus- 
sian" nationality into Ukrainian, Belorussian, and Russian com- 
ponents; and the introduction of "oriental despotism" to Russia. 
But most historians have agreed that Kievan Rus' was not a 
homogeneous political, cultural, or ethnic entity and that the Mon- 
gols merely accelerated its breakup, which had begun before the 
invasion. Nevertheless, modern historians have tended to credit 
the Mongol regime with a very important role in the development 
of Muscovy as a state. Muscovy, for example, adopted its postal 
road network, census, fiscal system, and military organization from 
the Mongols. 

Kievan Rus' left a powerful legacy. Under the leadership of the 
Rurikid Dynasty, a large territory inhabited by East Slavs was 
united into an important, albeit unstable, state. After the accep- 
tance of Eastern Orthodoxy, Kievan Rus' was united by a church 
structure and developed a Byzantine- Slavic synthesis in culture, 
the arts, and traditions. In the western part of this area, these tra- 
ditions helped form the Ukrainian and Belorussian nationalities. 
On the northeastern periphery of Kievan Rus', these traditions 
were adapted to form the Russian autocratic state. 

Muscovy 

The development of the Russian state can be traced from 
Vladimir-Suzdal' through Muscovy to the Russian Empire. 
Muscovy drew people and wealth to the northeastern periphery 
of Kievan Rus'; established trade links to the Baltic, White, and 
Caspian seas and to Siberia; and created a highly centralized and 
autocratic political system. Muscovite political traditions, there- 
fore, have exerted a powerful influence on Russian and Soviet 
society. 



10 



St. Sofia Cathedral 
(completed in 1046), 
Kiev, Ukrainian Republic 
Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 



Cathedral of the Assumption 
(completed in 1479) 
in Moscow's Kremlin, 
where coronations of tsars 
took place, the last one for 
Tsar Nicholas II in 1894 
Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

The Rise of Muscovy 

When the Mongols invaded the lands of Kievan Rus', Moscow 
was an insignificant trading outpost in the principality of Vladimir- 
Suzdal'. Muscovy's remote, forested location offered some security 
from Mongol attack and occupation, while a number of rivers pro- 
vided access to the Baltic and Black seas and to the Caucasus region. 
More important to Moscow's development in the state of Muscovy, 
however, was its rule by a series of princes who were ambitious, 
determined, and lucky. The first ruler of the principality of Muscovy, 
Daniil Aleksandrovich (d. 1303), secured the principality for his 
branch of the Rurikid Dynasty. His son, Ivan I (1325-40), known 
as Kalita (' ' Money Bags"), obtained the tide of * 'Grand Prince of 
Vladimir" from his Mongol overlords. He closely cooperated with 
the Mongols and collected tribute from other Russian principalities 
on their behalf. This enabled him to gain regional ascendancy, par- 
ticularly over Muscovy's rival, Tver'. In 1327 the Orthodox metro- 
politan transferred his residency from Vladimir to Moscow, further 
enhancing the prestige of the new principality. 

The grand princes of Muscovy began gathering Russian lands 
to increase the population and wealth under their rule. The most 
successful "gatherer" was Ivan III (1462-1505), who in 1478 con- 
quered Novgorod and in 1485 Tver' (see table 2, Appendix A). 
Through inheritance, Ivan obtained part of Ryazan', and the 
princes of Rostov and Yaroslavl' voluntarily subordinated them- 
selves to him. Pskov, which remained independent, was conquered 
in 1510 by Ivan's son, Vasilii III (1505-33). By the beginning of 
the sixteenth century, Muscovy had united virtually all ethnically 
Russian lands. 

Muscovy gained full sovereignty as Mongol power waned, and 
Mongol overlordship was officially terminated in 1480. Ivan III 
was the first Muscovite ruler to use the titles of tsar and "Ruler 
of all Rus'," laying claim not only to Russian areas but also to 
parts of the Ukrainian and Belorussian lands of Kievan Rus'. 
Lithuania, then a powerful state, included other parts of Belorussia 
and central Ukraine. Ivan III competed with Lithuania for con- 
trol over some of the semi-independent former principalities of 
Kievan Rus' in the upper Dnepr and Donets river basins. Through 
defections of some princes, border skirmishes, and an inconclu- 
sive war with Lithuania, Ivan III was able to push westward, and 
Muscovy tripled in size under his rule. 

The Evolution of Russian Autocracy 

Outward expansion was accompanied by internal consolidation. 
By the fifteenth century, the rulers of Muscovy considered the entire 



12 



Historical Setting: Early History to 1917 

territory their collective property. Various semi- independent princes 
still claimed specific territories, but Ivan forced the lesser princes 
to acknowledge the grand prince of Muscovy and his descendants 
as unquestioned rulers and having control over military, judicial, 
and foreign affairs. 

Gradually, the Muscovite ruler emerged as a powerful, autocratic 
ruler, a "tsar." By assuming the tide "tsar," the Muscovite prince 
underscored that he was a major ruler or emperor, much like the 
emperor of the Byzantine Empire or the Mongol khan. Indeed, 
Byzantine terms, rituals, emblems such as the double-headed eagle, 
and tides were adopted by the Muscovite court after Ivan Ill's mar- 
riage to Sophia Paleologue, the niece of the last Byzantine emperor. 
Ivan III was the first Russian prince to begin using the title "tsar 
and autocrat," mimicking the titles used by Christian emperors 
of Constantinople. At first, "autocrat" indicated merely that the 
tsar was an independent ruler, but in the reign of Ivan IV (1533-84) 
the concept was enlarged until it came to mean unlimited rule. Ivan 
IV was crowned tsar and was thus recognized, at least by the Ortho- 
dox Church, as emperor. An Orthodox monk had claimed that, 
with the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453, 
the Muscovite tsar was the only legitimate Orthodox ruler and that 
Moscow was the Third Rome because it was the final successor 
to Rome and Constantinople, the centers of Christianity in earlier 
eras. 

Ivan IV 

The development of the tsar's autocratic powers reached a cul- 
mination during the reign of Ivan IV. Ivan, who became known 
as "the Terrible" or "the Dread," strengthened the position of 
the tsar to an unprecedented degree, thus demonstrating the risks 
of unbridled power in the hands of an unbalanced individual. 
Although apparently intelligent and energetic, he suffered from 
bouts of paranoia and depression, and his rule was prone to ex- 
treme violence. 

Ivan IV became grand prince of Muscovy in 1533 at the age 
of three. Various boyar (see Glossary) factions competed for con- 
trol over the regency until Ivan assumed the throne in 1547. Reflect- 
ing Muscovy's new imperial claims, Ivan was crowned tsar in an 
elaborate ritual modeled after the coronation of the Byzantine em- 
perors. Ivan continued to be assisted by a group of boyars, and 
his reign began a series of useful reforms. During the 1550s, a new 
law code was promulgated, the military was revamped, and local 
government was reorganized. These reforms were undoubtedly in- 
tended to strengthen Muscovy in the face of continuous warfare. 



13 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

During the late 1550s, Ivan became angry with his advisers, the 
government, and the boyars. Historians have not determined 
whether his wrath was caused by policy differences, personal ani- 
mosities, or mental imbalance. In any case, he divided Muscovy 
into two parts: his private domain and the public realm. For his 
private domain, Ivan chose some of the most prosperous and im- 
portant districts in Muscovy. In these areas, Ivan's agents attacked 
boyars, merchants, and even common people, summarily execut- 
ing them and confiscating their land and possessions. A decade of 
terror descended over Muscovy. As a result of the oprichnina (see 
Glossary), Ivan broke the economic and political power of the lead- 
ing boyar families, thereby destroying precisely those persons who 
had built up Muscovy and were the most capable of running it. 
Trade was curtailed, and peasants, faced with mounting taxes and 
physical violence, began to leave central Muscovy. Efforts to cur- 
tail the mobility of the peasants brought Muscovy closer to legal 
serfdom. In 1572 Ivan finally abandoned the practices followed dur- 
ing the oprichnina. 

Despite domestic turmoil, Muscovy continued to wage wars and 
to expand. Ivan defeated and annexed the Kazan' Khanate in 1552 
and later the Astrakhan' Khanate. With these victories, Muscovy 
gained access to the entire Volga River littoral and Central Asia. 
Muscovy's expansion eastward encountered relatively little resis- 
tance. In 1581 the Stroganov merchant family, interested in the 
fur trade, hired a cossack (see Glossary) leader, Ermak, to lead 
an expedition into western Siberia. Ermak defeated the Siberian 
Khanate and claimed the territories west of the Ob' and Irtysh rivers 
for Muscovy (see fig. 3). 

Expanding northwest toward the Baltic Sea proved to be much 
more difficult. In 1558 Ivan invaded Livonia, which eventually em- 
broiled him in a twenty-five-year war against Poland, Lithuania, 
Sweden, and Denmark. Despite occasional successes, Ivan's army 
was pushed back, and Muscovy failed to secure a position on the 
Baltic Sea. The war drained Muscovy. Some historians believe that 
the oprichnina was initiated to mobilize resources for the war and 
to counter opposition to it. In any case, Ivan's domestic and for- 
eign policies were devastating for Muscovy, and they led to a period 
of social struggle and civil war, the so-called Time of Troubles (1598- 
1613). 

The Time of Troubles 

Ivan IV was succeeded by his son Fedor, who was mentally defi- 
cient. Actual power was exercised by Fedor' s brother-in-law, Boris 
Godunov, a boyar. Perhaps the most important event of Fedor' s 



14 



Historical Setting: Early History to 1917 

reign was the proclamation of the patriarchate of Moscow in 1 589 . 
The patriarchate culminated the evolution of a separate and totally 
independent Russian Orthodox Church. 

In 1598 Fedor died without an heir, ending the Rurikid Dynasty. 
Boris Godunov called a zemskii sobor (see Glossary), which pro- 
claimed him tsar, although various boyar factions refused to ac- 
cept him. Widespread crop failures caused a famine between 1601 
and 1603, and in the ensuing discontent, a leader emerged who 
claimed to be Dmitrii, a son of Ivan IV (the actual Dmitrii had 
died in 1591). This First False Dmitrii obtained military support 
in Poland and began a march toward Moscow. On his way, he 
was joined by dissatisfied elements ranging from peasants to boyars. 
Historians speculate that Godunov would have weathered the cri- 
sis, but he died in 1605, and, as a result, the pretender entered 
Moscow and was crowned tsar, following the murder of Fedor II, 
Boris Godunov 's son. 

Subsequendy, Muscovy entered a period of continuous chaos. 
The Time of Troubles included a civil war in which a struggle over 
the throne was complicated by the machinations of rival boyar fac- 
tions, the intervention of Poland and Sweden, and intense popular 
discontent. The First False Dmitrii and his Polish garrison were over- 
thrown, and a boyar, Vasilii Shuiskii, was proclaimed tsar in 1606. 
In his attempt to retain the throne, Shuiskii allied himself with the 
Swedes. A Second False Dmitrii, allied with the Poles, appeared. 
In 1610 the Polish heir apparent was proclaimed tsar, and the Poles 
occupied Moscow. The Polish presence led to a patriotic revival 
among the Russians, and a new army — financed by northern mer- 
chants and blessed by the Orthodox Church — drove the Poles out 
of Moscow. In 1613a zemskii sobor chose the boyar Mikhail Romanov 
as tsar, thus beginning 300 years of Romanov rule. 

For over a decade, Muscovy was in chaos, but the institution of 
autocracy remained intact. Despite the tsar's persecution of the 
boyars, the dissatisfaction of the townspeople, and the gradual en- 
serfment of the peasantry, efforts at restricting the tsar were only 
halfhearted. Finding no institutional alternative to autocracy, the 
discontented rallied behind various pretenders. During this period, 
politics consisted of gaining influence over an autocrat or placing 
one's candidate on the throne. The boyars fought among themselves, 
the lower classes revolted blindly, and foreign armies occupied the 
Kremlin in Moscow, prompting many to accept tsarist absolutism 
and autocracy as necessary to restore unity and order in Muscovy. 

The Romanovs 

The most immediate task of Romanov rule was to restore order. 
Fortunately for Muscovy, its major enemies, Poland and Sweden, 



15 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 




Historical Setting: Early History to 1917 

were in bitter conflict with each other, and Muscovy obtained peace 
with Sweden in 1617 and a truce with Poland in 1619. After an 
unsuccessful attempt to regain Smolensk from Poland in 1632, Mus- 
covy made peace with Poland in 1634. The Polish king, who had 
been elected tsar during the Time of Troubles, renounced all claims 
to the tide. 

Mikhail Romanov was a weak monarch, and state affairs were 
actually in the hands of his father, Filaret, who in 1619 became 
patriarch of the Orthodox Church. Similarly, Mikhail's son, Alexis 
(1645-76), relied on a boyar, Boris Morozov, to run the govern- 
ment. Morozov abused his position by exploiting the populace, and 
in 1648, after an uprising in Moscow, he was dismissed. 

The autocracy survived the Time of Troubles and the rule of 
weak or corrupt tsars because of the strength of the government's 
central bureaucracy. Its functionaries continued to serve, regard- 
less of the tsar's legitimacy or the boyar faction controlling the tsar. 
In the seventeenth century, this bureaucracy expanded dramati- 
cally. The number of government departments (prikazi) increased 
from twenty-two in 1613 to eighty by mid-century. Although the 
departments often had overlapping and conflicting jurisdictions, 
the central government, through provincial governors, controlled 
and regulated all social groups, trade, manufacturing, and even 
the Orthodox Church. 

The extent of state control of Russian society was demonstrated 
by the comprehensive legal code introduced in 1649. By that time, 
the boyars had largely merged with the elite, who were obligatory 
servitors of the state, to form a new nobility (dvorianstvo) . Both 
groups, whether old or new nobility, were required to serve the 
state, primarily in the military. In return, they received land and 
peasants. Peasants, whose right to move to another landlord had 
been gradually curtailed, were thereafter attached to their domicile. 
The state fully sanctioned serfdom, and runaway peasants became 
state fugitives. Landlords had complete power over their peasants 
and sold, traded, or mortgaged them. Peasants living on state-owned 
land, however, were not considered serfs. They were organized into 
communes, which were responsible for taxes and other obligations. 
Like serfs, however, state peasants were attached to the land they 
farmed. Burghers, who lived in urban areas and engaged in trade 
and handicrafts, were assessed taxes and were also prohibited from 
changing residences. All segments of the population were subject 
to military levies and special taxes. Flight was the most common 
escape from state-imposed burdens. By chaining much of Musco- 
vite society to its domicile, the legal code of 1649 curtailed move- 
ment and subordinated the people to the interests of the state. 



17 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Increased state exactions and regulations exacerbated the social 
discontent that had been simmering since the Time of Troubles. 
A major uprising occurred in the Volga region in 1670 and 1671 . 
Stenka Razin, a cossack from the Don River area, spearheaded 
a revolt that drew together dissatisfied cossacks, escaped serfs, and 
Turkic ethnic groups. The uprising swept the Volga River Valley 
and even threatened Moscow. Ultimately, tsarist troops defeated 
the rebels, and Stenka Razin was publicly tortured and executed. 

Expansion and Westernization 

Muscovy continued its territorial growth. In the southwest, it 
acquired eastern Ukraine, which had been under Polish rule. The 
Ukrainian Cossacks, warriors organized into military formations, 
lived in the frontier areas bordering Poland, the Tatar lands, and 
Muscovy. Although they had served the Polish king as mercenary 
troops, the Ukrainian Cossacks remained fiercely independent and 
staged a number of uprisings against the Poles. In 1648 the Ukrain- 
ian Cossacks revolted and were joined by most of Ukrainian soci- 
ety, which had suffered political, social, religious, and ethnic 
oppression under Polish rule. After the Ukrainians threw off Polish 
rule, they needed military help to sustain their gains. In 1654 the 
leader of the Ukrainian Cossacks, Bohdan Khmel'nyts'kyi, offered 
to place Ukraine under the protection of the Muscovite tsar rather 
than the Polish king. After some hesitation, the tsar accepted 
Khmel'nyts'kyi' s offer, which led to a protracted war between 
Muscovy and Poland. The war was concluded by the Treaty of 
Andrusovo in 1667. Ukraine was split along the Dnepr River. The 
western bank was retained by Poland, and the eastern bank re- 
mained self-governing under the suzerainty of the tsar. 

In the east, Muscovy had obtained western Siberia in the six- 
teenth century. From this base, merchants, traders, and explorers 
continued to push east from the Ob' River to the Yenisey River 
and then from the Yenisey River to the Lena River. By the mid- 
dle of the seventeenth century, Muscovites had reached the Amur 
River and the outskirts of the Chinese Empire. After a period of 
conflict, Muscovy made peace with China in 1689. By the Treaty 
of Nerchinsk, Muscovy gave up claims to the Amur River Valley. 
By the middle of the seventeenth century, Muscovy extended east- 
ward through Eurasia to the Pacific Ocean. 

Muscovy's southwestern expansion, particularly its incorpora- 
tion of eastern Ukraine, had unintended consequences. Most 
Ukrainians were Orthodox, but, having had to compete with the 
Polish Counter-Reformation, they combined Western intellectual 
currents with their religion. Through Kiev, Muscovy obtained links 



18 



Historical Setting: Early History to 1917 

to Polish and central European influences and to the wider Ortho- 
dox world. Historically, Ukrainians had been under the jurisdic- 
tion of the patriarch of Constantinople. Although the Ukrainian 
link stimulated creativity, it also undermined traditional Russian 
religious practices and culture. The Russian Orthodox Church dis- 
covered that because of its isolation from Constantinople, varia- 
tions had crept into its liturgical books and practices. The Russian 
Orthodox patriarch, Nikon, was determined to correct the texts 
according to the Greek originals. Nikon, however, encountered 
fierce opposition because many Russians viewed the corrections 
as inspired by foreigners or the devil. The Orthodox Church forced 
the reforms, which resulted in a schism in 1667. Those who did 
not accept the reforms, the Old Believers, were pronounced heretics 
and were persecuted by the church and the state. The chief oppo- 
sition figure, Avvakum, was burned at the stake. The split subse- 
quently became permanent, and many merchants and prosperous 
peasants joined the Old Believers. 

The impact of Ukraine and the West was also felt at the tsar's 
court. Kiev, through its famed scholarly academy, founded by 
Metropolitan Mohila in 1631 , was a major transmitter of new ideas 
and introduced the Muscovite elite to a central European variant 
of the Western world. Among the results of this infusion of ideas 
were baroque architecture, literature, and icon painting. Other 
more direct channels to the West opened as international trade in- 
creased and more foreigners came to Muscovy. The tsar's court 
was interested in the West's more advanced technology, particu- 
larly if its applications were military in nature. By the end of the 
seventeenth century, Ukrainian, Polish, and West European pene- 
tration had undermined the Muscovite cultural synthesis — at least 
among the elite — and had prepared the way for an even more radi- 
cal transformation. 

Early Imperial Russia 

In the eighteenth century, Muscovy was transformed from a static, 
somewhat isolated, traditional state into the more dynamic, partially 
Westernized, and secularized Russian Empire. This transformation 
was in no small measure a result of the vision, energy, and deter- 
mination of Peter the Great (1682-1725). Historians disagree about 
the extent to which Peter himself transformed Russia, but they gener- 
ally concur that he laid the foundations that shaped the empire over 
the next two centuries. The era he initiated signaled the advent of 
Russia as a major European power. But although the Russian Em- 
pire would play a leading political role for the next century, its reten- 
tion of serfdom precluded economic progress of any significant 



19 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

degree. As west European economic growth accelerated during the 
Industrial Revolution, Russia began to lag ever further behind, 
creating new problems for the empire as a great power. 

Peter the Great and the Formation of the Russian Empire 

As a child of the second marriage of Tsar Alexis, Peter was at 
first relegated to the background of Russian politics as various court 
factions struggled for control of the throne. Tsar Alexis was suc- 
ceeded by his son from his first marriage, Fedor III, a sickly boy 
who died in 1682. Peter was then made co-tsar with his half brother, 
Ivan V, but real power was held by Peter's half sister, Sofia. She 
ruled as regent while the young Peter was allowed to play war games 
with his friends and roam in Moscow's foreign quarters. These 
early experiences instilled in him an abiding interest in Western 
warfare and technology, particularly in military engineering, ar- 
tillery, navigation, and shipbuilding. In 1689, using troops he had 
drilled during childhood games, Peter foiled a plot to have Sofia 
crowned. With the death of Ivan V in 1696, Peter became the sole 
tsar of Muscovy. 

Much of Peter's reign was spent at war. At first he attempted 
to secure Muscovy's southern borders against the Tatars and the 
Ottoman Turks. His campaign against a fort on the Sea of Azov 
failed at first, but having created Russia's first navy, Peter was 
able to take the port of Azov in 1696. To continue the war with 
the Ottoman Empire, Peter began looking for allies in Europe. He 
traveled to Europe, the first tsar to do so, in a so-called Grand Em- 
bassy that included visits to Brandenburg, Holland, England, and 
the Holy Roman Empire. Peter learned a great deal and enlisted 
into his service hundreds of European technical specialists. The 
embassy was cut short by a revolt in Moscow that attempted to 
place Sofia on the throne. Peter's followers crushed the revolt. Peter 
had hundreds of the participants tortured and killed, and he pub- 
licly displayed their bodies as a lesson to others. 

Although Peter was unsuccessful in forging an anti-Ottoman coa- 
lition in Europe, he found interest in waging war against Sweden 
during his travels. Seeing an opportunity to break through to the 
Baltic Sea, Peter made peace with the Ottoman Empire in 1700 
and then attacked the Swedes at Narva. Sweden's young king, 
Charles XII, however, proved to be a military genius and crushed 
Peter's army. Fortunately for Peter, Charles did not follow his vic- 
tory with a counteroffensive, but rather became embroiled in a series 
of wars over the Polish throne. The respite allowed Peter to build 
a new Western- style army. When the two met again in the town 
of Poltava in 1709, Peter defeated Charles. Charles escaped to 



20 



Column of Glory in Poltava, 
Ukrainian Republic. The bronze 
eagle at its top faces the 
battlefield where, in 1709, 
Peter the Great defeated King 
Charles XII of Sweden. 
Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 




Ottoman territories, and Russia subsequently became engaged in 
another war with the Ottoman Empire. Russia agreed to return 
the port of Azov to the Ottoman Empire in 1711. The Great North- 
ern War, which in essence was settled at Poltava, dragged on until 
1721, when Sweden agreed to the Treaty of Nystad. Muscovy re- 
tained what it had conquered: Livonia, Estonia, and Ingria on the 
Baltic Sea. Through his victories, Peter had acquired a direct link 
to western Europe. In celebration, Peter assumed the tide of em- 
peror as well as tsar, and Muscovy became the Russian Empire 
in 1721. 

Muscovy's expansion into Europe and transformation into the 
Russian Empire had been accomplished by restructuring the mili- 
tary, streamlining the government, and mobilizing Russia's finan- 
cial and human resources. Peter had established Russia's naval 
forces and reorganized the army along European lines. Soldiers, 
who served for life, were drafted from the taxed population. Officers 
were drawn from the nobility and were required to spend lifelong 
service in either the military or the civilian administration. In 1722 
Peter introduced the Table of Ranks, which determined position 
and status on the basis of service to the tsar rather than on birth 
or seniority. Even commoners were ennobled automatically if they 
achieved a certain rank. 

Peter also reorganized the governmental structure. The prikazi 
were replaced with colleges, or boards, and the newly created Senate 



21 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

coordinated government policy. Peter's reform of the local govern- 
mental system was less successful, but its operations were adequate 
for collecting taxes and maintaining order. As part of the govern- 
mental reform, the Orthodox Church was partially incorporated 
into the administrative structure of the country. The patriarchate 
was abolished and replaced by a collective body, the Holy Synod, 
which was headed by a lay government official. 

Peter managed to triple the revenues coming into the state trea- 
sury. A major innovation was a capitation, or poll tax, levied on 
all males except clergy and nobles. A myriad of indirect taxes on 
alcohol, salt, and even beards added further income. To provide 
uniforms and weapons for the military, Peter developed a metal- 
lurgical and textile industry based on the labor of serfs. 

Peter wanted Russia to have modern technologies, institutions, 
and ideas. He required Western- style education for all male no- 
bles, introduced "cipher" schools to teach the alphabet and basic 
arithmetic, established a printing house, and funded the Academy 
of Sciences (see Glossary), established just before his death in 1725. 
He demanded that aristocrats acquire Western dress, tastes, and 
social customs. As a consequence, the cultural rift between the no- 
bles and the mass of Russia people deepened. Peter's drive for 
Westernization, his break with past traditions, and his coercive 
methods were epitomized in the construction of the new, architec- 
turally Western capital, St. Petersburg, situated on land newly con- 
quered on the Gulf of Finland. St. Petersburg faced westward but 
was constructed by conscripted labor. Westernization by coercion 
could not arouse the individualistic creative spirit that was an im- 
portant element of the Western ways Peter so much admired. 

Peter's reign raised questions regarding Russia's backwardness, 
its relationship to the West, its coercive style of reform from above, 
and other fundamental problems that have confronted subsequent 
rulers. In the nineteenth century, Russians debated whether Peter 
correctly pointed Russia toward the West or violated its natural 
traditions. Historians' views of Peter's reign have tended to reveal 
their own political and ideological positions as to the essence of Rus- 
sia' s history and civilization. 

Era of Palace Revolutions 

Having killed his own son, Alexis, who had opposed his father's 
reforms and served as a rallying point for antireform groupings, 
Peter changed the rules of succession. A new law provided that 
the tsar would choose his own heir, but Peter failed to do so before 
his own death in 1725. The absence of clear rules of succession 
left the monarchy open to intrigues, plots, coups, and countercoups. 



22 



Historical Setting: Early History to 1917 

Henceforth, the crucial factor for obtaining the throne was the sup- 
port of the elite palace guard stationed in St. Petersburg. 

At first, Peter's wife, Catherine I, seized the throne. But she 
died in 1727, and Peter's grandson, Peter II, was crowned tsar. 
In 1730 Peter II succumbed to smallpox, and Anna, a daughter 
of the former co-tsar, Ivan V, ascended the throne. The clique of 
nobles that put Anna on the throne attempted to impose various 
conditions on her. Although initially accepting these "points," 
Anna repudiated them after becoming tsarina. Anna was supported 
by other nobles, who apparently feared oligarchic rule more than 
autocracy. Despite continuing chaotic struggles for the throne, the 
nobles did not question the principle of autocratic absolutism. 

Anna died in 1740, and her infant grandnephew, Ivan VI, was 
proclaimed tsar. After a series of coups, however, he was replaced 
by Peter the Great's daughter Elizabeth (1741-62). During Eliza- 
beth's reign, a Westernized yet Russian culture began to emerge, 
as witnessed by the founding of Moscow University (1755) and the 
Academy of Fine Arts (1757). In the same period, Russia also 
produced its first eminent scientist and scholar, Mikhail V. 
Lomonosov. 

During the rule of Peter's successors, Russia increased its role 
in the European state system. From 1726 to 1761, Russia was al- 
lied with Austria against the Ottoman Empire, which, in turn, was 
usually supported by France. In the War of Polish Succession 
(1733-35), Russia and Austria blocked the French candidate to the 
Polish throne. In a cosdy war with the Ottoman Empire (1734-39), 
Russia reacquired the port of Azov. Russia's greatest reach into 
Europe was during the Seven Years' War (1756-63). Russia had 
continued its alliance with Austria, but in the "diplomatic revolu- 
tion" of the period Austria allied itself with France against Prus- 
sia. In 1760 Russian forces were at the gates of Berlin. Fortunately 
for Prussia, Elizabeth died in 1762, and her successor, Peter III, 
was devoted to the Prussian emperor, Frederick the Great. Peter 
III allied Russia with Prussia. 

Peter III had a very short and unpopular reign. Although a 
grandson of Peter the Great, he was the son of the duke of Holstein 
and was raised in a German Lutheran environment. He was there- 
fore considered a foreigner. Making no secret of his contempt for 
all things Russian, Peter created deep resentment by foisting Prus- 
sian military drills on the Russian military, attacking the church, 
and creating a sudden alliance with Prussia, which deprived Rus- 
sia of a military victory. Making use of the discontent and fearing 
for her own position, Peter Ill's wife, Catherine, deposed her hus- 
band in a coup. Peter III was subsequently murdered by Catherine's 



23 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

lover, Aleksei Orlov. Thus, in June 1762 a German princess, who 
had no legitimate claim to the Russian throne, became Tsarina 
Catherine II, empress of Russia. 

Imperial Expansion and Maturation: Catherine II 

Catherine IPs reign was notable for imperial expansion and in- 
ternal consolidation. The empire acquired huge new territories in 
the south and west. A war that broke out with the Ottoman Em- 
pire in 1768 was settled by the Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji in 1774. 
Russia acquired an outlet to the Black Sea, and the Crimean Tatars 
were made independent of the Ottomans. In 1783 Catherine an- 
nexed Crimea, helping to spark the next war with the Ottoman 
Empire in 1787. By the Treaty of Jassy in 1792, Russia acquired 
territory south to the Dnestr River. The terms of the treaty fell 
far short of the goals of Catherine's reputed "Greek project" — 
the expulsion of the Ottomans from Europe and the renewal of a 
Byzantine empire under Russian control. The Ottoman Empire, 
nevertheless, was no longer a serious threat to Russia and was forced 
to tolerate an increasing Russian influence over the Balkans. 

Russia's westward expansion was the result of the partitioning 
of Poland. As Poland became increasingly weak in the eighteenth 
century, each of its neighbors — Russia, Prussia, and Austria — 
tried to place its own candidate on the Polish throne. In 1772 the 
three agreed on the first partition, by which Russia received parts 
of Belorussia and Livonia. After the partition, Poland initiated an 
extensive reform program, which in 1793 led to the second parti- 
tion. This time Russia obtained most of Belorussia and Ukraine 
west of the Dnepr River. The partition led to an anti-Russian and 
anti-Prussian uprising in Poland, which ended with the third par- 
tition in 1795. The result was that Poland was wiped off the map. 

Although the partitioning of Poland greatly added to Russia's 
territory and prestige, it also created new difficulties. Russia, having 
lost Poland as a buffer, had to share borders with both Prussia and 
Austria. In addition, the empire became more ethnically het- 
erogeneous as it absorbed large numbers of Poles, Ukrainians, 
Belorussians, and Jews. The fate of the Ukrainians and Belorus- 
sians, who were primarily serfs, changed little at first under Rus- 
sian rule. Roman Catholic Poles, however, resented their loss of 
independence and proved to be difficult to integrate. Jews, who had 
been barred from Russia in 1742, were viewed as an alien popula- 
tion, and a decree of January 3, 1792, formally initiated the Pale 
of Settlement (see Other Major Nationalities, ch. 4). The decree 
permitted Jews to live only in the western part of the empire, thereby 
setting the stage for anti-Jewish discrimination in later periods. At 



24 



Summer Palace of Peter the Great in Leningrad, Russian Republic. The 
palace, completed in 1 712 in the Dutch style of architecture by the Italian 
Domenico Trezzini, was converted into a museum under the Soviet regime. 

Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 

the same time, the autonomy of Ukraine east of the Dnepr, the 
Baltic states, and various cossack areas was abolished. With her 
emphasis on a uniformly administered empire, Catherine presaged 
the policy of Russification practiced by later tsars and by their suc- 
cessors. 

Historians have debated Catherine's sincerity as an enlightened 
monarch, although few have doubted that she believed in govern- 
ment activism aimed at developing the empire's resources and 
making its administration more rational and effective. Initially, 
Catherine attempted to rationalize government procedures through 
law. In 1767 she created the Legislative Commission, drawn from 
nobles, townsmen, and others, to codify Russia's laws. Although 
no new law code was formulated, Catherine's Instruction to the 
Commission introduced some Russians to Western political and 
legal thinking. 

During the 1768-74 war with the Ottoman Empire, Russia expe- 
rienced a major social upheaval, the Pugachev Uprising. In 1773, 
a Don Cossack, Emelian Pugachev, announced that he was Peter 
III. He was joined in the rebellion by other cossacks, various Turkic 
tribes who felt the impingement of the Russian centralizing state, 



25 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

and industrial workers in the Ural Mountains, as well as by peasants 
hoping to escape serfdom. Russia's preoccupation with the war 
enabled Pugachev to take control of a part of the Volga area, but 
the regular army crushed the rebellion in 1774. 

The Pugachev Uprising bolstered Catherine's determination to 
reorganize Russia's provincial administration. In 1775 she divided 
Russia, strictly according to population statistics, into provinces 
and districts and gave each province an expanded administrative, 
police, and judicial apparatus. Nobles, who were no longer required 
to serve the central government, were given significant roles in 
administering provincial governments. 

Catherine also attempted to organize society into well-defined 
social groups, or estates. In 1785 she issued charters to nobles and 
townsmen. The Charter to the Nobility confirmed the liberation 
of the nobles from compulsory service and gave them rights that 
not even the autocracy could infringe upon. The Charter to the 
Towns proved to be complicated and ultimately less successful than 
the one issued to the nobles. Failure to issue a similar charter to 
state peasants, or to ameliorate the conditions of serfdom, made 
Catherine's social reforms incomplete. 

The intellectual Westernization of the elite continued during 
Catherine's reign. An increase in the number of books and peri- 
odicals also brought forth intellectual debates and social criticism. 
In 1 790 Aleksandr Radishchev published his Journey from St. Peters- 
burg to Moscow, a fierce attack on serfdom and the autocracy. Cather- 
ine, already frightened by the French Revolution, had Radishchev 
arrested and banished to Siberia. Radishchev was later recognized 
as "the father of Russian radicalism." 

In many respects, Catherine brought the policies of Peter the 
Great to fruition and set the foundation for the nineteenth-century 
empire. Russia became a power capable of competing with its Euro- 
pean neighbors on military, political, and diplomatic grounds. Rus- 
sia's elite became culturally more like the elites of central and west 
European countries. The organization of society and the govern- 
ment system, from Peter the Great's central institutions to Cather- 
ine's provincial administration, remained basically unchanged until 
the emancipation of the serfs in 1861 and, in some respects, until 
the fall of the monarchy in 1917. Catherine's push to the south, 
with the founding of the city of Odessa on the Black Sea, provided 
the basis for Russia's nineteenth-century grain trade. 

Despite such accomplishments, the empire built by Peter I and 
Catherine II was beset with fundamental problems. A small Euro- 
peanized elite, alienated from the mass of ordinary Russians, raised 
questions about the very essence of Russia's history, culture, and 



26 



Historical Setting: Early History to 1917 

identity. Russia's military preeminence was achieved by reliance 
on coercion and a primitive command economy based on serfdom. 
Although economic development was almost sufficient for Russia's 
eighteenth-century needs, it was no match for those of the Western 
countries that were being transformed by the Industrial Revolu- 
tion. Catherine's attempt at organizing society into corporate 
estates was already being challenged by the French Revolution, 
which emphasized individual citizenship. Russia's territorial ex- 
pansion and the incorporation of an increasing number of non- 
Russians into the empire set the stage for the future nationalities 
problem. Finally, the first questioning of serfdom and autocracy 
on moral grounds foreshadowed the conflict between the state and 
the intelligentsia that was to become dominant in the nineteenth 
century. 

Ruling the Empire 

During the early nineteenth century, Russia's population, 
resources, international diplomacy, and military forces made it one 
of the most powerful states in the world. Its power enabled it to 
play an increasingly assertive role in the affairs of Europe. This 
role drew it into a series of wars against Napoleon, which had far- 
reaching consequences not only for Europe but also for Russia. 
After a period of enlightenment, Russia became an active oppo- 
nent of liberalizing trends in central and western Europe. Inter- 
nally, Russia's population had grown more diverse with each 
territorial acquisition. The population included Lutheran Finns, 
Baltic Germans, Estonians, and some Latvians; Roman Catholic 
Lithuanians, Poles, and some Latvians; Orthodox and Uniate (see 
Glossary) Belorussians and Ukrainians; Muslim peoples of vari- 
ous sects; Orthodox Greeks and Georgians; and Apostolic Arme- 
nians. As Western influence and opposition to Russian autocracy 
mounted, the regime reacted by curtailing the activities of persons 
advocating change, by creating a secret police, and by increasing 
censorship. The regime remained increasingly committed to its serf- 
based economy as the means of supporting the upper classes, the 
government, and the military forces. But Russia's backwardness 
and inherent weakness were revealed when several powers attacked 
a Russian fortress in Crimea and forced its surrender. 

War and Peace, 1796-1825 

Catherine II died in 1796 and was succeeded by her son Paul 
(1796-1801). Painfully aware that Catherine had planned to bypass 
him and name his son, Alexander, as tsar, Paul instituted primo- 
geniture in the male line as the basis for succession. It was one 



27 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

of the few lasting reforms of Paul's brief reign. He also chartered 
a Russian-American company, which led to Russia's acquisition 
of Alaska. Paul was haughty and unstable, and he frequently 
reversed his previous decisions, creating administrative chaos and 
accumulating enemies. 

As a major European power, Russia could not escape the wars 
involving revolutionary and Napoleonic France. Paul became an 
adamant opponent of France, and Russia joined Britain and Aus- 
tria in a war against France. Russian troops under one of Russia's 
most famous generals, Aleksandr Suvorov, performed brilliantly 
in Italy and Switzerland. Paul, however, reversed himself and aban- 
doned his allies. This reversal, coupled with increasingly arbitrary 
domestic policies, sparked a coup, and in March 1801 Paul was 
assassinated. 

The new tsar, Alexander I (1801-25), came to the throne as the 
result of the murder of his father, in which he was implicated. 
Groomed for the throne by Catherine II and raised in the spirit 
of enlightenment, Alexander also had an inclination toward roman- 
ticism and religious mysticism, particularly in the latter period of 
his reign. Alexander tinkered with changes in the central govern- 
ment, and he replaced the colleges set up by Peter the Great with 
ministries, but without a coordinating prime minister. The liberal 
statesman Mikhail Speranskii proposed a constitutional reform, but 
it was never implemented. 

Alexander's primary focus was not on domestic policy but on 
foreign affairs, and particularly on Napoleon. Fearing Napoleon's 
expansionist ambitions and the growth of French power, Alexander 
joined Britain and Austria against Napoleon. The Russians and 
Austrians were defeated at Austerlitz in 1805, and the Russians 
were trounced at Friedland in 1807. Alexander was forced to sue 
for peace, and by the Treaty of Tilsit, signed in 1807, he became 
Napoleon's ally. Russia lost little territory under the treaty, and 
Alexander made use of his alliance with Napoleon for further ex- 
pansion. He wrested the Grand Duchy of Finland from Sweden 
in 1809 and acquired Bessarabia from Turkey in 1812. 

The Russo-French alliance gradually became strained. Napoleon 
was concerned about Russia's intentions in the Bosporous and 
Dardenelles straits. At the same time, Alexander viewed the Grand 
Duchy of Warsaw, the French-controlled reconstituted Polish state, 
with suspicion. The requirement of maintaining a continental block- 
ade against Britain made trading difficult, and in 1810 Alexander 
repudiated the obligation. In June 1812, Napoleon invaded Rus- 
sia with 600,000 troops — a force that was twice as large as the Rus- 
sian regular army. Napoleon hoped to inflict a major defeat on 



28 



Historical Setting: Early History to 1917 

the Russians and have Alexander sue for peace. As Napoleon 
pushed the Russian forces back, he became seriously overextended. 
Although Napoleon occupied a burning Moscow, the Russians re- 
fused to surrender, and Napoleon had to retreat. The harsh wintry 
weather, combined with continuous harassment by Russian forces, 
resulted in the destruction of Napoleon's Grand Army. Fewer than 
30,000 troops returned from the Russian campaign. 

As the French retreated, the Russians pursued them into cen- 
tral and western Europe, to the gates of Paris. After the defeat of 
Napoleon by the allies, Alexander became known as the "savior 
of Europe," and he played a prominent role in the redrawing of 
the map of Europe at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. In the same 
year, under the influence of religious mysticism, Alexander initiated 
the creation of the Holy Alliance, an agreement pledging the rulers 
of the nations involved to act according to Christian principles. 
More pragmatically, in order to prevent the resurgence of an ex- 
pansionist France, the Quadruple Alliance had been formed by 
Russia, Britain, Austria, and Prussia in 1814. The allies created 
an international system to maintain the territorial status quo. This 
system, confirmed by a number of international conferences, en- 
sured Russia's influence in Europe. 

At the same time, Russia continued its expansion. The Con- 
gress of Vienna created the Russian Kingdom of Poland (Russian 
Poland), to which Alexander granted a constitution. Thus Alex- 
ander I became the constitutional monarch of Poland while remain- 
ing the autocratic tsar of Russia. He was also the limited monarch 
of Finland, which had been annexed in 1809 but awarded autono- 
mous status. In 1813 Russia gained territory in the Baku area of 
the Caucasus at the expense of Iran. By the early nineteenth cen- 
tury, the empire also was firmly ensconced in Alaska. 

Historians have generally agreed that a revolutionary movement 
was born during the reign of Alexander I. Young officers who had 
pursued Napoleon into western Europe came back to Russia with 
revolutionary ideas, including liberalism, representative govern- 
ment, and mass democracy. Whereas in the eighteenth century in- 
tellectual Westernization had been fostered by a paternalistic, 
autocratic state, in the nineteenth century Western ideas included 
opposition to autocracy, demands for representative government, 
calls for the abolition of serfdom, and, in some instances, advo- 
cacy of a revolutionary overthrow of the government. Officers were 
particularly incensed that Alexander had granted Poland a consti- 
tution while Russia remained without one. Several clandestine or- 
ganizations were preparing for an uprising when Alexander died 
unexpectedly in 1825. Following his death, there was confusion 



29 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

as to who would succeed him because his heir, Constantine, had 
relinquished his right to the throne. A group of officers command- 
ing about 3,000 men refused to swear allegiance to the new tsar, 
Nicholas I, and proclaimed their loyalty to * 'Constantine and Con- 
stitution." Because these events occurred in December 1825, the 
rebels were called Decembrists. Nicholas had them surrounded and, 
when they refused to disperse, ordered the army to fire on them. 
The revolt was soon over, and the Decembrists who remained alive 
were arrested. Many were exiled to Siberia. 

To some extent, the Decembrists were in the tradition of a long 
line of palace revolutionaries who wanted to place their candidate 
on the throne. But because the Decembrists also wanted to imple- 
ment a liberal political program, their revolt has been considered 
the beginning of a revolutionary movement. The "Decembrists' 
revolt" was the first open breach between the government and lib- 
eral elements — a breach that subsequently widened. 

Period of Reaction: Nicholas I, 1825-55 

Having experienced the trauma of the Decembrists' revolt, 
Nicholas I was determined to restrain Russian society. A secret 
police, the so-called Third Section, ran a huge network of spies 
and informers. Government censorship and controls were exercised 
over education, publishing, and all manifestations of public life. 
The minister of education, Sergei Uvarov, devised a program of 
"autocracy, Orthodoxy, and nationality" as the guiding princi- 
ple of the regime. The people were asked to show loyalty to the 
unlimited authority of the tsar, the traditions of the Orthodox 
Church, and, in a vague way, to the Russian nation. These prin- 
ciples did not gain the support of the population but instead led 
to repression in general and to suppression of non-Russian nation- 
alities and religions other than Russian Orthodoxy in particular. 
For example, the Uniate Church in Ukraine and Belorussia was 
suppressed in 1839. 

The official emphasis on Russian nationalism to some extent con- 
tributed to a debate on Russia's place in the world, the meaning 
of Russian history, and the future of Russia. One group, the 
Westernizers, believed that Russia remained backward and primi- 
tive and could progress only through more thorough Europeani- 
zation. Another group, the Slavophiles, idealized the Russia that 
had existed before Peter the Great. The Slavophiles viewed old Rus- 
sia as a source of wholeness and looked askance at Western ration- 
alism and materialism. Some of them believed that the Russian 
peasant commune offered an attractive alternative to Western 
capitalism and could make Russia a potential social and moral savior 



30 



Jt. ft 



St. Nicholas Cathedral 
(completed in 1762), Leningrad, 
Russian Republic. This 
functioning church is an example 
of the Russian baroque style. 
Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 



of mankind. The Slavophiles, therefore, represented a form of Rus- 
sian messianism. 

Despite the repressions of this period, Russia experienced a 
flowering of literature and the arts. Through the works of Aleksandr 
Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol, Ivan Turgenev, and numerous others, 
Russian literature gained international stature and recognition. 
After its importation from France, ballet took root in Russia, and 
classical music became firmly established with the compositions of 
Mikhail Glinka. 

In foreign policy, Nicholas I acted as the protector of ruling legiti- 
mism and as the guardian against revolution. His offers to sup- 
press revolution on the European continent, accepted in some 
instances, earned him the label of "gendarme of Europe." In 1830, 
after an uprising in France, the Poles in Russia revolted. Nicholas 
crushed the rebellion, abrogated the Polish constitution, and 
reduced Russian Poland to the status of a province. In 1848, when 
a series of revolutions convulsed Europe, Nicholas was in the fore- 
front of reaction. In 1849 he intervened on behalf of the Habs- 
burgs and helped suppress an uprising in Hungary, and he also 
urged Prussia not to accept a liberal constitution. Having helped 
conservative forces repel the specter of revolution, Nicholas I seemed 
to dominate Europe. 

Russian dominance proved illusory, however. While Nicholas 
I was attempting to maintain the status quo in Europe, he adopted 



31 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

an aggressive policy toward the Ottoman Empire. Nicholas I was 
following the traditional Russian policy of resolving the "Eastern 
Question" by seeking to partition the Ottoman Empire and es- 
tablish a protectorate over the Orthodox population of the Balkans. 
Russia fought a successful war with the Ottomans in 1828 and 1829. 
In 1833 Russia negotiated the Treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi with the 
Ottoman Empire. Western statesmen believed mistakenly that the 
treaty contained a secret clause granting Russia the right to send 
warships through the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits. As a result, 
the major European powers intervened and by the London Straits 
Convention of 1841 affirmed Ottoman control over the straits and 
forbade any power, including Russia, to send warships through 
the straits. Based on his role in suppressing the revolutions of 1848 
and his mistaken belief that he had British diplomatic support, 
Nicholas moved against the Ottomans, who declared war in 1853. 
Thus the Crimean War began. But the European powers were 
frightened of Russia, and in 1854 Britain, France, and Sardinia 
joined the Ottoman Empire against Russia. Austria offered the 
Ottomans diplomatic support, while Prussia remained neutral. The 
European allies landed in Crimea and laid siege to a well-fortified 
base at Sevastopol' . After a year's siege the base fell, exposing Rus- 
sia's inability to defend a major fortification on its own soil. Nicholas 
I died before the fall of Sevastopol', but even before then he had 
recognized the failure of his regime. Russia now had to initiate 
major reforms or cease to be a competitive major power. 

The Transformation of Imperial Russia 

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were difficult 
for Russia. Not only did technology and industry continue to de- 
velop more rapidly in the West but also new, dynamic, competi- 
tive great powers appeared on the world scene: Otto von Bismarck's 
united Germany, the post-Civil War United States, and Meiji 
Restoration Japan. Although it was an expanding regional giant 
in Central Asia straddling the borders of the Ottoman, Iranian, 
British Indian, and Chinese empires, Russia could not generate 
enough capital to undergo rapid industrial development or to com- 
pete with advanced countries on a commercial basis. Russia's fun- 
damental dilemma was that either it could attempt to accelerate 
domestic development and risk upheaval at home or it could 
progress slowly and risk becoming an economic colony of the more 
advanced world. The transformation of the economic and social 
structure of Russia was accompanied by political ferment, particu- 
larly among the intelligentsia, and also by impressive developments 
in literature, music, the fine arts, and the natural sciences. 



32 



Historical Setting: Early History to 1917 

Economic Developments 

Throughout the last half of the nineteenth century, Russia's econ- 
omy developed more slowly than did that of the major European 
nations to its west. The population of Russia was substantially larger 
than those of the more developed Western countries, but the vast 
majority of the people lived in rural communities and engaged in 
relatively primitive agriculture. Industry, in general, had greater 
state involvement than in western Europe, but in selected sectors 
it was developing with private initiative, some of it foreign. The 
population doubled between 1850 and 1900, but it remained chiefly 
rural well into the twentieth century. Russia's population growth 
rate from 1850 to 1910 was the fastest of all the major powers ex- 
cept for the United States (see table 3, Appendix A). 

Agriculture, which was technologically underdeveloped, re- 
mained in the hands of former serfs and former state peasants, who 
together constituted about four- fifths of the population. Large estates 
of more than fifty square kilometers accounted for about 20 per- 
cent of all farmland, but for the most part they were not worked 
in efficient, large-scale units. Small-scale peasant farming and the 
growth of the rural population produced extensive agricultural 
development because land was used more for gardens and fields 
of grain and less for grazing meadows than it had been in the past 
(see table 4, Appendix A). 

Industrial growth was significant, although unsteady, and in ab- 
solute terms it was not extensive. Russia's industrial regions in- 
cluded Moscow, the central regions of the country, St. Petersburg, 
the Baltic cities, Russian Poland, some areas along the lower Don 
and Dnepr rivers, and the Ural Mountains. By 1890 Russia had 
about 32,000 kilometers of railroads and 1 .4 million factory work- 
ers, the majority of them in the textile industry. Between 1860 and 
1890, coal production had grown about 1,200 percent to over 6.6 
million tons, and iron and steel production had more than dou- 
bled to 2 million tons. The state budget, however, had more than 
doubled, and debt expenditures had quadrupled, constituting 28 
percent of official expenditures in 1891. Foreign trade was inade- 
quate to meet the empire's needs, and surpluses sufficient to cover 
the debts incurred to finance trade with the West were not realized 
until high industrial tariffs were introduced in the 1880s. 

Reforms and Their Limits, 1855-92 

Tsar Alexander II, who succeeded Nicholas I in 1855, was a con- 
servative who nonetheless saw no alternative to change and who 
initiated substantial reforms in education, the government, the 



33 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

judiciary, and the military, in addition to emancipating the serfs. 
His reforms were accelerated after Russia's military weakness and 
backwardness had become apparent during the Crimean War. Fol- 
lowing Alexander's assassination in 1881, his son Alexander III 
reasserted government controls. 

In 1861 Alexander II proclaimed the emancipation of about 20 
million privately held serfs. Local commissions, which were domi- 
nated by landlords, effected emancipation by giving land and limited 
freedom to the serfs. The former serfs usually remained in the vil- 
lage commune, or mir (see Glossary), but were required to make 
redemption payments, which were stretched out over a period of 
almost fifty years, to the government. The government compen- 
sated former owners of serfs by issuing them bonds. 

The regime had envisioned that the 50,000 landlords who pos- 
sessed estates of over 110 hectares would thrive without serfs and 
would continue to provide loyal political and administrative leader- 
ship in the countryside. The government also had envisioned that 
peasants would produce sufficient crops for their own consump- 
tion and for export sales, thereby helping to finance most of the 
government's expenses, imports, and foreign debt. Neither of the 
government's visions was realistic, and both the former serfs and 
the former owners of serfs were dissatisfied with the outcome of 
emancipation. Because the lands given to serfs by local commis- 
sions were often poor and because Russian agricultural methods 
were inadequate, the new peasants soon fell behind in their pay- 
ments to the government. The former owners of serfs, most of whom 
could neither farm nor manage estates without their former serfs, 
often had to sell their lands to remain solvent. In addition, the value 
of their government bonds fell as the peasants failed to make their 
redemption payments. 

Reforms of the local governmental system closely followed eman- 
cipation. In 1864 most local government in the European part of 
Russia was organized into provincial zemstvos (see Glossary) and 
district zemstvos, which included representatives of all classes. In 
1870 elected city councils, or dumas, were formed. Dominated by 
nobles and other property owners and constrained by provincial 
governors and the police, the zemstvos and city dumas were 
empowered to raise taxes and levy labor to develop, maintain, and 
operate local transportation, education, and public health care 
systems. 

In 1864 the regime implemented judicial reforms. In major 
towns, it established Western-style courts with juries. In general, 
the judicial system functioned effectively, but sometimes juries sym- 
pathized with obvious criminals and refused to convict them. The 



34 



Historical Setting: Early History to 1917 

government was unable, financially and culturally, to extend the 
court system to the villages, where traditional peasant justice con- 
tinued to operate with minimal interference from provincial offi- 
cials. In addition, judges were instructed to decide each case on 
its merits and not to use precedents, which would have enabled 
them to construct a body of law independent of state authority. 
Under the reform, the Senate, one of the highest government 
bodies, adopted more of the characteristics of a supreme court, with 
three major branches: civil, criminal, and administrative. 

Other major reforms took place in the educational and cultural 
spheres. The accession of Alexander II brought a social restruc- 
turing that required a public discussion of issues. Accordingly, the 
regime lifted some manifestations of censorship, yet in 1863 it pro- 
hibited publishing in the Ukrainian language. In 1866, when an 
attempt was made to assassinate the tsar, censorship was reinstated, 
but pre- 1855 levels of control were not restored. Universities, which 
were granted autonomy in 1861 , were also restricted in 1866. The 
central government, attempting to act through the zemstvos but 
lacking effective resources, sought to establish uniform curricula 
for elementary schools and to control the schools by imposing con- 
servative policies. Because many liberal teachers and school offi- 
cials were only nominally subject to the reactionary Ministry of 
Education, the regime's educational achievements were mixed after 
1866. 

In the financial sphere, the State Bank was established in 1866, 
and Russia's currency was put on a firmer footing. The Ministry 
of Finance supported railroad development, facilitating vital ex- 
ports, but it was cautious and moderate in its foreign ventures. 
The ministry also founded the Peasant Land Bank in 1882 to enable 
enterprising farmers to acquire more land. The Ministry of the 
Interior, however, countered this policy by establishing the Nobles' 
Land Bank in 1885 to forestall foreclosures of mortgages. 

The regime also sought to reform the military. One of the chief 
reasons for the emancipation of the serfs was to facilitate the tran- 
sition from a large standing army to a reserve army by instituting 
territorial levies and mobilization in times of need. Before eman- 
cipation, serfs could not be given military training and then returned 
to their owners. Bureaucratic inertia, however, obstructed mili- 
tary reform until the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) demonstrated 
the necessity of building a modern army. The levy system in- 
troduced in 1874 gave the army a role in teaching many peasants 
to read and in pioneering medical education for women. But despite 
these military reforms, the army remained backward. Officers often 
preferred bayonets to bullets and feared that long-range sights on 



35 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

rifles would induce cowardice. In spite of some notable achieve- 
ments, Russia did not keep pace with Western technological de- 
velopments in the construction of rifles, machine guns, artillery, 
ships, and naval ordnance. Also, naval modernization in the 1860s 
failed to spur broad development of Russia's industrial base. 

In 1881 revolutionaries assassinated Alexander II. His son Alex- 
ander III (1881-94) initiated a period of political reaction, which 
intensified a counterreform movement that had begun in 1866. He 
strengthened the security police, reorganized as the Okhrana (see 
Glossary), gave it extraordinary powers, and placed it under the 
Ministry of the Interior. Dmitrii Tolstoi, Alexander's minister of 
the interior, instituted the use of land captains, who were noble 
overseers of districts, and he restricted the power of the zemstvos 
and dumas. Alexander III assigned his former tutor, the reaction- 
ary Konstantin Pobedonostsev, to be the procurator (see Glossary) 
of the Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church and Ivan Delianov to 
be the minister of education. In their attempts to 1 'save" Russia 
from "modernism," they revived religious censorship, persecuted 
the non-Orthodox and non-Russian population, fostered anti- 
Semitism, and suppressed the autonomy of the universities. Their 
attacks on liberal and non-Russian elements alienated large seg- 
ments of the population. The nationalities, particularly Poles, Finns, 
Latvians, Lithuanians, and Ukrainians, reacted to the regime's 
efforts to Russify them by intensifying their own nationalism. Many 
Jews emigrated or joined radical movements. Secret organizations 
and political movements continued to develop despite the regime's 
efforts to quell them. 

Foreign Affairs after the Crimean War, 1856-93 

After the Crimean War, Russia pursued cautious and intelli- 
gent foreign policies until nationalist passions and another Balkan 
crisis almost caused a catastrophic war in the late 1870s. The 1856 
Treaty of Paris concluded at the end of the Crimean War demilita- 
rized the Black Sea and deprived Russia of southern Bessarabia 
and a narrow strip of land at the mouth of the Danube River. It 
also nullified the 1774 Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji by theoretically 
providing European protection of the Christians living in the 
Ottoman Empire. Russian statesmen viewed Britain and Austria 
(Austria- Hungary as of 1867) as opposed to revising the Treaty 
of Paris, and they sought good relations with France, Prussia, and 
the United States. Prussia (Germany as of 1871) replaced Britain 
as Russia's chief banker. 

Following the Crimean War, the regime revived its expansionist 
policies. Russian troops first moved to quell the lingering revolts 



36 



Historical Setting: Early History to 1917 



of Muslim tribesmen in the Caucasus. Once the revolts were 
crushed, the army resumed its expansion into Central Asia. At- 
tempts were made to ensure that Britain would not be unduly 
alarmed by Russia's policy of leaving the territories directly bor- 
dering Afghanistan and Iran nominally independent. Russia also 
supported Iranian attempts to expand into Afghanistan — a move 
that strained the resources of British India. At the same time, Russia 
followed the United States, Britain, and France in establishing 
relations with Japan, and it, together with Britain and France, ob- 
tained concessions from China consequent to the Second Opium 
War (1856-60). By the Treaty of Aigun in 1858 and the Treaty 
of Beijing in 1860, China was forced to cede Russia extensive trad- 
ing rights and regions adjacent to the Amur and Ussuri rivers, and 
it allowed Russia to begin building a port and naval base at 
Vladivostok. Meanwhile, in 1867 the logic of the balance of power 
and the cost of developing and defending the Amur-Ussuri region 
dictated that Russia sell Alaska to the United States in order to 
acquire much-needed funds. 

As part of the regime's foreign policy goals in Europe, Russia 
gave guarded support to the anti- Austrian diplomacy of the French. 
A weak Franco-Russian entente soured, however, when France 
backed a Polish uprising against Russian rule in 1863. Russia then 
aligned itself more closely with Prussia and tolerated the unifica- 
tion of Germany in exchange for a revision of the Treaty of Paris 
and the remilitarization of the Black Sea. These diplomatic achieve- 
ments came at a London conference in 1871, following Prussia's 
defeat of France. After 1871 Germany, united by Prussia, was the 
strongest continental power in Europe. It supported both Russia 
and Austria-Hungary, and in 1873 it formed the loosely knit League 
of the Three Emperors with those two powers to forestall them from 
forming an alliance with France. 

Nevertheless, Austro-Hungarian and Russian ambitions clashed 
in the Balkans, where rival nationalities and anti-Ottoman senti- 
ments seethed. In the 1870s, Russian nationalist opinion became 
a serious domestic factor, supportive of policies that advocated liber- 
ating Balkan Christians from Ottoman rule and making Bulgaria 
and Serbia quasi-protectorates of Russia. From 1875 to 1877, the 
Balkans crisis heated, with rebellions in Bosnia, Hercegovina, and 
Bulgaria, and with a Serbo-Ottoman war. Russia, however, 
promised not to exercise influence in the western Balkans. 

In early 1877, Russia went to war with the Ottoman Empire, 
and by December its troops were nearing Constantinople. Rus- 
sia's nationalist diplomats and generals persuaded Alexander II 



37 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

to force the Ottomans to sign the Treaty of San Stefano in March 
1878. The treaty created an enlarged Bulgaria that stretched into 
the southwestern Balkans. This development alarmed Britain, which 
threatened war, and an exhausted Russia backed down. At the Con- 
gress of Berlin in July 1878, Russia agreed to the creation of a 
smaller Bulgaria. Russian nationalists were furious with Austria- 
Hungary and Germany, but the tsar accepted a revived and 
strengthened League of the Three Emperors as well as Austrian 
hegemony in the western Balkans. 

Russian diplomatic and military interests subsequently turned 
to the East. Russian troops occupied Turkmen lands on the Iranian 
and Afghan borders, raising British concerns, but German sup- 
port of Russian advances averted a possible Anglo-Russian war. 
The Bulgarians became angry with Russia's continuing interfer- 
ence in Bulgarian affairs and sought support from Austria. In turn, 
Germany, displaying firmness toward Russia, protected Austria 
from the tsar while mollifying him with a bilateral defensive alli- 
ance, the Reinsurance Treaty of 1887 between Germany and Rus- 
sia. Within a year, Russo-German acrimony led to Bismarck's 
forbidding further Russian loans, and France replaced Germany 
as Russia's financier. In 1890 Kaiser Wilhelm II dismissed Bis- 
marck, and the loose Russo-Prussian entente, which had held fast 
for more than twenty-five years, collapsed. The consequence of 
this development was that Russia allied itself with France in 1893 
by entering into a joint military convention, which matched the 
German- Austrian dual alliance of 1879. 

The Age of Realism in Literature 

Russian literature in the last half of the nineteenth century pro- 
vided a congenial and artistic medium for the discussion of politi- 
cal and social issues that could not be addressed directly because 
of government restrictions. The writers of this period shared im- 
portant qualities: great attention to realistic, detailed descriptions 
of everyday Russian life; the lifting of the taboo on describing the 
vulgar, unsightiy side of life; and a satirical attitude toward medioc- 
rity and routine. Although varying widely in style, subject matter, 
and viewpoint, these writers stimulated government bureaucrats, 
nobles, and intellectuals to think about important social issues. This 
period of literature, which became known as the Age of Realism, 
lasted from about mid-century to 1905. The literature of the Age 
of Realism owed a great debt to three authors and to a literary 
critic of the preceding half-century: Aleksandr Pushkin, Mikhail 
Lermontov, Nikolai Gogol, and Vissarion Belinskii. These figures 
set a pattern for language, subject matter, and narrative techniques, 



38 



Grave of Russian novelist 
Fedor Dostoevskii in the 
Tikhvin Cemetery 
of the Aleksandr Nevskii 
Monastery, Leningrad, 
Russian Republic 
Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 




which before 1830 had been very poorly developed. The critic 
Belinskii became the patron saint of the radical intelligentsia through- 
out the century. 

The main outlet for literary opinion in the Age of Realism was 
the "thick journal" — a combination of original literature, criticism, 
and a wide variety of other material. These publications reached 
a large portion of the intelligentsia. Most of the materials of the 
major writers and critics of the period were featured in such jour- 
nals, and published debates were common between journals of vari- 
ous viewpoints. Much of the prose literature of the period contained 
sharply polemical messages, favoring either radical or reactionary 
positions concerning the problems of Russian society. Ivan Turgenev 
was perhaps the most successful at integrating social concerns with 
true literary art. His Hunter's Sketches and Fathers and Sons portrayed 
Russia's problems with great realism and with enough artistry that 
these v/orks have survived as classics. Many writers of the period 
did not aim for social commentary, but the realism of their por- 
trayals nevertheless drew comment from radical critics. Such writers 
included the novelist Ivan Goncharov, whose Oblomov is a very nega- 
tive portrayal of the provincial gentry, and the dramatist Aleksandr 
Ostrovskii, whose plays uniformly condemned the bourgeoisie. 

Above all the other writers stand two: Lev Tolstoy and Fedor 
Dostoevskii, the greatest talents of the age. Their realistic style tran- 
scended immediate social issues and explored universal issues such 



39 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

as morality and the nature of life itself. Although Dostoevskii was 
sometimes drawn into polemical satire, both writers kept the main 
body of their work above the dominant social and political pre- 
occupations of the 1860s and 1870s. Tolstoy's War and Peace and 
Anna Karenina and Dostoevskii 's Crime and Punishment and The Brothers 
Karamazov have endured as genuine classics because they drew the 
best from the Russian realistic heritage while focusing on broad 
human questions. Although Tolstoy continued to write into the 
twentieth century, he rejected his earlier style and never again 
reached the level of his greatest works. 

The literary careers of Tolstoy, Dostoevskii, and Turgenev had 
ended by 1881. Anton Chekhov, the major literary figure in the 
last decade of the nineteenth century, contributed in two genres: 
short story and drama. Chekhov, a realist who examined not soci- 
ety as a whole but the foibles of individuals, produced a large volume 
of sometimes tragic, sometimes comic short stories and several out- 
standing plays, including The Cherry Orchard, a dramatic chroni- 
cling of the decay of a Russian aristocratic family. 

The Rise of Revolutionary Populism and Russian Marxism, 
1855-90 

The reforms of Alexander II, particularly his lifting of state cen- 
sorship, fostered the development of political and social thought. 
The regime relied on journals and newspapers to gain support for 
its domestic and foreign polices. But liberal, nationalist, and radi- 
cal writers also helped mold opinion opposed to tsarism, private 
property, and the imperial state. Because many intellectuals, profes- 
sionals, peasants, and workers shared these sentiments, the publi- 
cations and the organizations that the radicals joined were perceived 
as dangerous to the regime. From the 1860s through the 1880s, 
Russian radicals, collectively known as "Populists" (Narodniki), 
focused chiefly on the peasantry, whom they identified as "the peo- 
ple" (narod). 

Among the leaders of the Populist movement were radical writers, 
idealists, and advocates of terrorism. In the 1860s, Nikolai Cherny- 
shevskii, the most important radical writer of the period, posited 
that Russia could bypass capitalism and move direcdy to socialism. 
His most influential work, What Is to Be Done? (1861), describes the 
role of an individual of a "superior nature" who guides a new, 
revolutionary generation. Other radicals such as the incendiary anar- 
chist Mikhail Bakunin and his terrorist collaborator, Sergei Nechaev, 
urged direct action. The calmer Petr Tkachev argued against the 
advocates of Marxism (see Glossary), maintaining that a central- 
ized revolutionary band had to seize power before socialism could 



40 



Historical Setting: Early History to 1917 

fully develop. Disputing his views, the moralist and individualist 
Petr Lavrov made a call "to the people" that was heeded in 1873 
and 1874 when hundreds of idealists left their schools for the coun- 
tryside to try to generate a mass movement among the narod. The 
Populist campaign failed, however, when the peasants showed 
hostility to the urban idealists and the government more willingly 
began to consider nationalist opinion. 

The radicals reconsidered their approach, and in 1876 they formed 
a propagandist organization called Land and Liberty (Zemlia i volia), 
which leaned toward terrorism. It became even more oriented to- 
ward terrorism three years later, renamed itself the People's Will 
(Narodnaia volia), and in 1881 was responsible for the assassina- 
tion of Alexander II. In 1879 Georgii Plekhanov formed a propagan- 
dist faction of Land and Liberty called Black Repartition (Chernyi 
peredel), which advocated reassigning all land to the peasantry. This 
group studied Marxism, which, paradoxically, was principally con- 
cerned with urban industrial workers. The People's Will remained 
underground, but in 1887 a young member of the group, Aleksandr 
Ulianov, attempted to assassinate Alexander III and was arrested 
and executed. Another Ulianov, Vladimir, was greatly affected by 
his brother's execution. Influenced by Chernyshevskii's writings, 
he also joined the People's Will and later, under the influence of 
Plekhanov, converted to Marxism. The younger Ulianov later 
changed his name to Lenin. 

Serge Witte and Accelerated Industrialization, 1891-1903 

In the late 1800s, Russia's domestic backwardness and vulner- 
ability in foreign affairs reached crisis proportions. A famine claim- 
ing a half-million lives in 1891 exemplified the domestic crisis, and 
activities by Japan and China near Russia's borders were perceived 
as threats from abroad. In reaction, the regime was forced to adopt 
the ambitious but costly economic programs of Sergei Witte, the 
country's strong-willed minister of finance. Witte championed a 
combination of foreign loans, conversion to the gold standard, heavy 
taxation of the peasantry, accelerated development of heavy in- 
dustry, and a trans-Siberian railroad. These policies were designed 
to modernize the country, secure the Russian Far East, and give 
Russia a commanding position with which to exploit the resources 
of China's northern territories, Korea, and Siberia. This expan- 
sionist foreign policy was Russia's version of the imperialism so 
characteristic of the relations of advanced capitalist countries with 
weak and backward areas during the nineteenth century. The ac- 
cession of the pliable Nicholas II in 1894 resulted in the domina- 
tion of the government by Witte and other powerful ministers. 



41 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



The results of Witte's policies were mixed. In spite of a severe 
depression at the end of the century, Russia's coal, iron, steel, and 
oil production tripled between 1890 and 1900. Railroad mileage 
almost doubled, giving Russia the most track of any nation other 
than the United States. Yet Russian grain production and exports 
failed to rise significantly, and imports grew faster than exports, 
although the latter subsequently rose. The state budget also more 
than doubled, absorbing some of the country's economic growth. 
Western historians have differed as to the merits of Witte's reforms, 
with some believing that many domestic industries that did not 
benefit from subsidies or contracts suffered a setback. Moreover, 
most analysts have agreed that the Trans-Siberian Railway and 
the ventures into Manchuria and Korea were economic losses for 
Russia and a drain on the treasury. Certainly the financial costs 
of his reforms contributed to Witte's dismissal as minister of finance 
in 1903. 

The Development of Radical Political Parties, 1892-1904 

During the 1890s, Russia's industrial development led to a sig- 
nificant increase in the size of the urban bourgeoisie and the working 
class, setting the stage for a more dynamic political atmosphere 
and the development of radical parties. Because much of Russia's 
industry was owned by the state or by foreigners, the working class 
was comparatively stronger and the bourgeoisie comparatively 
weaker than in the West. Because the nobility and the wealthy bour- 
geoisie were politically timid, the establishment of working-class 
and peasant parties preceded that of bourgeois parties. Thus, in 
the 1890s and early 1900s strikes and agrarian disorders prompted 
by abysmal living and working conditions, high taxes, and land 
hunger became more frequent. The bourgeoisie of various nation- 
alities developed a host of different parties, both liberal and con- 
servative. 

Socialist parties were formed on the basis of the nationalities of 
their members. Russian Poles, who had suffered significant ad- 
ministrative and educational Russification, founded the nationalistic 
Polish Socialist Party in Paris in 1892. Its founders hoped that it 
would help reunite a divided Poland from territories held by Aus- 
tria and Germany and by Russia. In 1897 the Bund was founded 
by Jewish workers in Russia, and it became popular in western 
Ukraine, Belorussia, Lithuania, and Russian Poland. In 1898 the 
Russian Social Democratic Labor Party was formed. The Finnish 
Social Democrats remained separate, but the Latvians and 
Georgians associated themselves with the Russian Social Democrats. 
Armenians were inspired by both Russian and Balkan revolutionary 

42 



On March 1, 1881, the building 
in the foreground was a 
cheese shop, from which 
members of the radical 
revolutionary group People's 
Will, posing as shop employees, 
assassinated Tsar Alexander II. 
Leningrad, Russian Republic. 
Courtesy Stephen Burant 




traditions, and they operated in both Russia and the Ottoman 
Empire. Politically minded Muslims living in Russia tended to be 
attracted to the pan-Islamic and pan-Turkic movements that de- 
veloped in Egypt and the Ottoman Empire. Russians who fused 
the ideas of the old Populists and urban socialists formed Russia's 
largest radical movement, the United Socialist Revolutionary Party, 
which combined the standard Populist ingredients of propaganda 
and terrorist activities. 

Vladimir I. Ulianov was the most politically talented of the 
revolutionary socialists. In the 1890s, he labored to wean young 
radicals away from populism to Marxism. Exiled from 1895 to 1899 
in Siberia, where he took the name Lenin, he was the master tac- 
tician among the organizers of the Russian Social Democratic Labor 
Party. In December 1900, he founded the newspaper Iskra (Spark). 
In his book What Is to Be Done? (1902), Lenin developed the theory 
that a newspaper published abroad could aid in organizing a cen- 
tralized revolutionary party to direct the overthrow of an autocratic 
government. He then worked to establish a tighdy organized, highly 
disciplined party to do so in Russia. At the Second Party Congress 
of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party in 1903, he forced 
the Bund to walk out, and he induced a split between his majority 
Bolshevik faction and the minority Menshevik faction, which be- 
lieved more in worker spontaneity than in strict organizational tac- 
tics. Lenin's concept of a revolutionary party and a worker-peasant 



43 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

alliance owed more to Tkachev and to the People's Will than to 
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the developers of Marxism. Young 
Bolsheviks such as Joseph V. Stalin and Nikolai I. Bukharin looked 
to Lenin as their leader. 

Imperialism in Asia and the Russo-Japanese War, 1894-1905 

At the turn of the century, Russia gained maneuvering room 
in Asia because of its alliance with France and the growing rivalry 
between Britain and Germany. Tsar Nicholas failed to orchestrate 
a coherent Far Eastern policy because of ministerial conflicts. Rus- 
sia's uncoordinated and aggressive moves in the region ultimately 
led to the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05). 

By 1895 Germany was competing with France for Russia's favor, 
and British statesmen hoped to negotiate with the Russians to 
demarcate spheres of influence in Asia. This situation enabled 
Russia to intervene in northeastern Asia after Japan's victory over 
China in 1895. Japan was forced to make concessions in the 
Liaotung Peninsula and Port Arthur in southern Manchuria. The 
next year, Witte used French capital to establish the Russo-Chinese 
Bank. The goal of the bank was to finance the construction of a 
railroad across northern Manchuria and thus shorten the Trans- 
Siberian Railway. Within two years, Russia had acquired leases 
on the Liaotung Peninsula and Port Arthur and had begun build- 
ing a trunk line from Harbin to Port Arthur. 

In 1900 China reacted to foreign encroachments on its territory 
with an armed popular uprising, the Boxer Rebellion. Russian mili- 
tary contingents joined forces from Europe, Japan, and the United 
States in restoring order in northern China. A force of 180,000 
Russian troops fought to pacify part of Manchuria and to secure 
its railroads. The Japanese, however, backed by Britain and the 
United States, insisted that Russia evacuate Manchuria. Witte and 
some Russian diplomats wanted to compromise with Japan and 
trade Manchuria for Korea, but a group of Witte 's reactionary 
enemies, courtiers, and army and naval leaders refused to com- 
promise. The tsar favored their viewpoint, and, disdaining Japan's 
threats — despite the latter 's formal alliance with Britain — the Rus- 
sian government equivocated until Japan declared war in early 
1904. 

Japan's location, technological superiority, and higher morale 
gave it command of the seas, and Russia's sluggishness and in- 
competent commanders were the cause of continuous setbacks on 
land. In January 1905, after an eight-month siege, Port Arthur 
surrendered, and in March the Japanese forced the Russians to 
withdraw north of Mukden. In May, at the Tsushima Straits, the 



44 



Historical Setting: Early History to 1917 



Japanese destroyed Russia's last hope in the war, a fleet assem- 
bled from the navy's Baltic and Mediterranean squadrons. Theo- 
retically, Russian army reinforcements could have driven the 
Japanese from the Asian mainland, but revolution at home and 
diplomatic pressure forced the tsar to seek peace. Russia, accept- 
ing American mediation, ceded southern Sakhalin to Japan, and 
it acknowledged Japan's ascendancy in Korea and southern Man- 
churia. 

The Last Years of Tsardom 

The Russo-Japanese War was a turning point in Russian his- 
tory. It led to a popular uprising against the government that forced 
the regime to respond with domestic economic and political reforms. 
Advocates of counterreform and groups serving parochial interests, 
however, actively sought control of the regime's policies. In for- 
eign affairs, Russia again became an intrusive participant in Balkan 
affairs and in the international political intrigues of major Euro - 
pean powers. As a consequence of its foreign policies, Russia was 
drawn into a world war that its domestic policies rendered it poorly 
prepared to wage. The regime, severely weakened by internal tur- 
moil and a lack of strong leadership, was ultimately unable to sur- 
mount the traumatic events that would lead to the fall of tsarism 
and initiate a new era in Russian and world history. 

The Revolution of 1905 and Counterrevolution, 1905-07 

The Russo-Japanese War accelerated the rise of political move- 
ments among all classes and the major nationalities, including 
propertied Russians. By early 1904, Russian liberals active in as- 
semblies of nobles, zemstvos, and the professions had formed an 
organization called the Union of Liberation. In the same year, they 
joined with Finns, Poles, Georgians, Armenians, and with Russian 
members of the Socialist Revolutionary Party to form an anti- 
autocratic alliance. They later promoted the broad, professional 
Union of Unions. In early 1905, Father Georgii Gapon, a Russian 
Orthodox priest who headed a police- sponsored workers' associa- 
tion, led a huge, peaceful march in St. Petersburg to present a peti- 
tion to the tsar. Nervous troops responded with gunfire, killing 
several hundred people, and thus the Revolution of 1905 began. 
Called ' 'Bloody Sunday," this event, along with the failures incurred 
in the war with Japan, prompted opposition groups to instigate 
more strikes, agrarian disorders, army mutinies, and terrorist acts 
and to form a workers' council, or soviet (see Glossary), in St. 
Petersburg. Armed uprisings occurred in Moscow, the Urals, Latvia, 
and parts of Poland. Activists from the zemstvos and the Union 



45 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

of Unions formed the Constitutional Democratic Party, whose 
members were known as Kadets. 

Some upper-class and propertied activists were fearful of these 
disorders and were willing to compromise. In late 1905, Nicholas, 
under pressure from Witte, issued the so-called October Manifesto, 
giving Russia a constitution and proclaiming basic civil liberties 
for all citizens. The constitution envisioned a ministerial govern- 
ment responsible to the tsar, not to the proposed national Duma — a 
state assembly to be elected on a broad, but not wholly equitable, 
franchise. Those who accepted this arrangement formed a center- 
right political party, the Octobrists. The Kadets held out for a 
ministerial government and equal, universal suffrage. Because of 
their political principles and continued armed uprisings, Russia's 
leftist parties were in a quandary over whether or not to partici- 
pate in the Duma elections. At the same time, rightists, who had 
been perpetrating anti-Jewish pogroms, actively opposed the re- 
forms. Several monarchist and protofascist groups wishing to sub- 
vert the new order also arose. Nevertheless, the regime continued 
to function, eventually restoring order in the cities, the country- 
side, and the army. In the process, several thousand officials were 
murdered by terrorists, and an equal number of terrorists were 
executed by the government. Because the government was success- 
ful in restoring order and in securing a loan from France before 
the Duma met, Nicholas was in a strong position and therefore 
able to dismiss Witte, who had been serving as Russia's chief 
minister. 

The First Duma, which was elected in 1906, was dominated by 
the Kadets and their allies, with the mainly nonparty radical leftists 
slightiy weaker than the Octobrists and the nonparty center-rightists 
combined. The Kadets and the government were deadlocked over 
the adoption of a constitution and peasant reform, leading to the 
dissolution of the Duma and the scheduling of new elections. In 
spite of an upsurge of leftist terror, radical leftist parties partici- 
pated in the election and, together with the nonparty left, gained 
a plurality of seats, followed by a loose coalition of Kadets and of 
Poles and other nationalities in the political center. The impasse 
continued, however, when the Second Duma met in 1907. 

The Tenuous Regimes of Stolypin and Kokovstev, 1907-14 

In 1907 Petr Stolypin, the new chief minister, instituted a series 
of major reforms. In June 1907, he dissolved the Second Duma 
and promulgated a new electoral law, which vastly reduced the elec- 
toral weight of lower class and non-Russian voters and increased 
the weight of the nobility. This political coup succeeded to the extent 



46 



Historical Setting: Early History to 1917 

that the government restored order. New elections in the fall 
returned a more conservative Third Duma, which was dominated 
by Octobrists. Even this Duma, however, quarreled with the 
government over a variety of issues: the composition of the naval 
staff, the autonomous status of Finland, the introduction of zemstvos 
into the western provinces, the reform of the peasant court sys- 
tem, and the establishment of workers' insurance organizations 
under police supervision. In these disputes, the Duma, with the 
appointed aristocratic-bureaucratic upper house, was sometimes 
more conservative than the government, and at other times it was 
more legally or constitutionally minded. The Fourth Duma, elected 
in 1912, was similar in composition to the Third Duma, but a 
progressive faction of Octobrists split from the right and joined the 
political center. 

Stolypin's boldest measure was his peasant reform program, 
which allowed, and sometimes forced, the breakup of communes 
as well as the establishment of full private property. Through the 
reform program, Stolypin hoped to create a class of conservative 
landowning farmers loyal to the tsar. Most peasants, however, did 
not want to lose the safety of the commune or to permit outsiders 
to buy village land. By 1914 only about 10 percent of all peasant 
communes had been dissolved. Nevertheless, the economy recov- 
ered and grew impressively from 1907 to 1914, not only quantita- 
tively but also in terms of the formation of rural cooperatives and 
banks and the generation of domestic capital. By 1914 Russian steel 
production equaled that of France and Austria-Hungary, and Rus- 
sia' s economic growth rate was one of the highest in the world. 
Although Russia's external debt was very high, it was declining 
as a percentage of the gross national product (GNP — see Glossary), 
and the empire's overall trade balance was favorable. 

In 1911 a double agent working for the Okhrana assassinated 
Stolypin. He was replaced by Vladimir N. Kokovtsev, Witte's suc- 
cessor as finance minister. Although very able and a supporter of 
the tsar, the cautious Kokovtsev could not compete with the power- 
ful court factions that dominated the government. 

Historians have debated whether or not Russia had the poten- 
tial to develop a constitutional government between 1905 and 1914. 
At any rate, it failed to do so, in part because the tsar was not 
completely willing to give up autocratic rule or share power. By 
manipulating the franchise, the authorities obtained more conser- 
vative, but less representative, Dumas. Moreover, the regime some- 
times bypassed the conservative Dumas and ruled by decree. 

During this period, the government's policies were inconsis- 
tent — some reformist, others repressive. The bold reform plans of 



47 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Witte and Stolypin have led historians to speculate as to whether 
or not such reforms could have " saved" the Russian Empire. But 
the reforms were hampered by court politics, and both the tsar and 
the bureaucracy remained isolated from the rest of society. Sus- 
pensions of civil liberties and the rule of law continued in many 
places, and neither workers nor the Orthodox Church had the right 
to organize themselves as they chose. Discrimination against Poles, 
Jews, Ukrainians, and Old Believers was common. Domestic un- 
rest was on the rise, while the empire's foreign policy was becom- 
ing more adventurous. 

The Return to an Active Balkan Policy, 1906-13 

The logic of Russia's earlier Far Eastern policy had required hold- 
ing Balkan issues in abeyance — a strategy also followed by Austria- 
Hungary between 1897 and 1906. Japan's victory in 1905 forced 
Russia to make deals with the British and the Japanese. In 1907 
Russia's new, more liberal foreign minister, Aleksandr P. Izvol'skii, 
concluded agreements with both nations. To maintain its sphere 
of influence in northern Manchuria and northern Iran, Russia 
agreed to Japanese ascendancy in southern Manchuria and Korea 
and to British ascendancy in southern Iran, Afghanistan, and Tibet. 
The logic of this policy demanded that Russia and Japan unite to 
prevent the United States from organizing a consortium to develop 
Chinese railroads and, after China's republican revolution of 191 1 , 
to recognize each other's spheres of influence in Outer Mongolia. 
In an extension of this logic, Russia traded recognition of German 
economic interests in the Ottoman Empire and Iran for German 
recognition of various Russian security interests in the region. Simi- 
larly, Russia's strategic and financial position required that it remain 
faithful to its alliance with France and that it bolster the Anglo- 
French and Anglo-Russian rapprochements with the informal Triple 
Entente of Britain, France, and Russia, but without antagonizing 
Germany or provoking a war. 

Nevertheless, following the Russo-Japanese War, Russia and 
Austria- Hungary resumed their Balkan rivalry, focusing on the 
South Slavic Kingdom of Serbia and the provinces of Bosnia and 
Hercegovina. The two provinces had been occupied by Austria- 
Hungary since 1878. Only a handful of Russian and Austrian states- 
men knew that in 1881 Russia secretly had agreed to Austria's 
future annexation of the provinces. But in 1908, Izvol'skii foolish- 
ly consented to their formal annexation in return for Austria's sup- 
port for a revision of the international agreement that had insured 
the neutrality of the Bosporus and Dardanelles. This arrangement 
would have given Russia special navigational rights of passage. 



48 



Historical Setting: Early History to 1917 

When Britain blocked the revision, Austria nonetheless proceeded 
with the annexation and, backed by German threats of war, forced 
Russia to disavow support for Serbia — a pointed demonstration 
of Russian weakness. 

After Austria's annexation of Bosnia and Hercegovina, Russian 
diplomacy increased tension and conflict in the Balkans. In 1912 
Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, and Montenegro defeated the Ottoman 
Empire but continued to quarrel among themselves. Then in 1913, 
the Bulgarians were defeated by the Serbians, Greeks, and Roma- 
nians. Austria became Bulgaria's patron, while Germany remained 
the Ottoman Empire's protector. Russia tied itself more closely 
to Serbia. When a Serbian terrorist assassinated the heir to the Aus- 
trian throne in late June 1914, Austria delivered an ultimatum to 
Serbia. Russia, fearing another humiliation in the Balkans, sup- 
ported Serbia. The system of alliances began to operate automati- 
cally, with Germany supporting Austria and with France backing 
Russia. When Germany invaded France through Belgium, the con- 
flict escalated into a world war. 

Russia at War, 1914-16 

Russia's large population enabled it to field a greater number 
of troops than Austria-Hungary and Germany combined, but its 
underdeveloped industrial base meant that its soldiers were as poorly 
armed as those of the Austrian army. Russian forces were inferior 
to Germany's in every respect except numbers. Generally, the larger 
Russian armies defeated the Austro- Hungarians but suffered 
reverses against German or combined German- Austrian forces un- 
less the latter were overextended. 

In the initial phase of the war, Russia's offensives into East Prus- 
sia drew enough German troops from the Western Front to allow 
the French, Belgians, and British to stabilize it. One of Russia's 
two invading armies was almost totally destroyed, however. Mean- 
while, the Russians turned back an Austrian offensive and pushed 
into eastern Galicia. The Russians halted a combined German- 
Austrian winter counteroffensive into Russian Poland, and in early 
1915 they pushed more deeply into Galicia. Then in the spring 
and summer of that year, a German-Austrian offensive drove the 
Russians out of Galicia and Poland and destroyed several Russian 
army corps. In 1916 the Germans planned to drive France out of 
the war with a large-scale attack in the Verdun area, but a new 
Russian offensive against Austria- Hungary once again drew Ger- 
man troops from the west. These actions left both major fronts stable 
and both Russia and Germany despairing of victory: Russia be- 
cause of exhaustion, Germany because of its opponents' superior 



49 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

resources. Toward the end of 1916, Russia came to the rescue of 
Romania, which had just entered the war, and extended the Eastern 
Front south to the Black Sea. Russia had between 4 and 5 million 
casualties in World War I. 

Wartime agreements among the Allies reflected the imperialist 
aims of the Triple Entente and the Russian Empire's relative weak- 
ness outside eastern Europe. Russia nonetheless expected impres- 
sive gains from a victory: territorial acquisitions in eastern Galicia 
from Austria, in East Prussia from Germany, and in Armenia from 
the Ottoman Empire; control of Constantinople and the Bosporus 
and Dardanelles straits; and territorial and political alteration of 
Austria- Hungary in the interests of Romania and the Slavic peo- 
ples of the region. Britain was to acquire the middle zone of Iran 
and share much of the Arab Middle East with France; Italy — not 
Russia's ally Serbia — was to acquire Dalmatia; Japan was to con- 
trol more territory in China; and France was to regain Alsace- 
Lorraine and to have increased influence in western Germany. 

The Strains of the War Effort and the Weakening of Tsarism 

The onset of World War I had a drastic effect on domestic poli- 
cies and a weak regime. A show of national unity had accompa- 
nied Russia's entrance into the war, but military reversals and the 
government's incompetence soon soured the attitude of much of 
the population. German control of the Baltic Sea and German- 
Ottoman control of the Black Sea severed Russia from most of its 
foreign supplies and potential markets. In addition, inept Russian 
preparations for war and ineffective economic policies hurt the coun- 
try financially, logistically, and militarily. Inflation became a seri- 
ous problem. Because of inadequate materiel support for military 
operations, the War Industries Committee was formed to ensure 
that necessary supplies reached the front. But army officers quar- 
reled with civilian leaders, seized administrative control of front 
areas, and would not work with the committee. The central govern- 
ment disliked independent support activities organized by zemstvos 
and various cities. The Duma quarreled with the bureaucracy, and 
center and center-left deputies eventually formed the Progressive 
Bloc, which was aimed at forming a genuinely constitutional gov- 
ernment. 

After Russian military reversals in 1915, Nicholas II went to the 
front to assume nominal leadership of the army. His German-born 
wife, Aleksandra, and Rasputin, a debauched faith healer, who was 
able to stop the bleeding of the hemophiliac heir to the throne, tried 
to dictate policy and make ministerial appointments. Although their 



50 



Historical Setting: Early History to 1917 

true influence has been debated, they undoubtedly decreased the 
regime's prestige and credibility. 

While the central government was hampered by court intrigue, 
the strain of the war began to cause popular unrest. In 1916 high 
food prices and a lack of fuel caused strikes in some cities. Work- 
ers, who won for themselves separate representative sections of the 
War Industries Committee, used them as organs of political op- 
position. The countryside was becoming restive. Soldiers, mainly 
newly recruited peasants who had been used as cannon fodder in 
the inept conduct of the war, were increasingly insubordinate. 

The situation continued to deteriorate. In an attempt to allevi- 
ate the morass at the tsar's court, a group of nobles murdered 
Rasputin in December 1916. But his death brought little change. 
In the winter of 1917, however, deteriorating rail transport caused 
acute food and fuel shortages, which resulted in riots and strikes. 
Troops were summoned to quell the disorders. Although troops 
had fired on demonstrators and saved tsarism in 1905, in 1917 the 
troops in Petrograd (the name of St. Petersburg after 1914) turned 
their guns over to the angry crowds. Support for the tsarist regime 
simply evaporated in 1917, ending three centuries of Romanov rule. 

* * * 

A good summary of Russian history is provided in New Encyclopedia 
Britannica, Macropaedia, "Russia and the Soviet Union, History 
of." Three excellent one-volume surveys of Russian history are 
Nicholas Riasanovsky's A History of Russia, David MacKenzie and 
Michael W. Curran's A History of Russia and the Soviet Union, and 
Robert Auty and Dmitry Obolensky's An Introduction to Russian His- 
tory. The most useful thorough study of Russia before the nineteenth 
century is Vasily Kliuchevsky's five- volume collection, Course of Rus- 
sian History. Good translations exist, however, only for the third 
volume, The Seventeenth Century, and part of the fourth volume, Peter 
the Great. For the 1800-1917 period, two excellent comprehensive 
works are the second volume of Michael T. Florinsky's Russia: A 
History and Interpretation and Hugh Seton-Watson's The Russian Em- 
pire, 1801-1917. The roots and nature of Russian autocracy are 
probed in Richard Pipes' s controversial Russia under the Old Regime. 
A useful, if dated, translation of a Soviet interpretation of this sub- 
ject is P.I. Liashchenko's A History of the National Economy of Russia 
to the 1917 Revolution. Social history is treated by Jerome Blum in 
Lord and Peasant in Russia from the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century. Cul- 
tural history is discussed in James H. Billington's The Icon and the 
Axe and Marc Raeff s Russian Intellectual History. (For further infor- 
mation and complete citations, see Bibliography.) 



51 



Vladimir I. Lenin, founder of the Soviet state and the Russian Communist 
Party (Bolshevik) 



THE UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS (Soviet 
Union) was established in December 1922 by the leaders of the 
Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik) on territory generally cor- 
responding to that of the old Russian Empire. A spontaneous popu- 
lar uprising in Petrograd overthrew the imperial government in 
March 1917, leading to the formation of the Provisional Govern- 
ment, which intended to establish democracy in Russia. At the same 
time, to ensure the rights of the working class, workers' coun- 
cils (soviets — see Glossary) sprang up across the country. The 
Bolsheviks (see Glossary), led by Vladimir I. Lenin, agitated for 
socialist revolution in the Soviets and on the streets, and they seized 
power from the Provisional Government in November 1917. Only 
after the ensuing Civil War (1918-21) and foreign intervention was 
the new communist government secure. 

From its first years, government in the Soviet Union was based 
on the one-party rule of the Communists, as the Bolsheviks called 
themselves beginning March 1918. After unsuccessfully attempt- 
ing to centralize the economy during the Civil War, the Soviet 
government permitted some private enterprise to coexist with 
nationalized industry in the 1920s. Debate over the future of the 
economy provided the background for Soviet leaders to contend 
for power in the years after Lenin's death in 1924. By gradually 
consolidating influence and isolating his rivals within the party, 
Joseph V. Stalin became the sole leader of the Soviet Union by 
the end of the 1920s. 

In 1928 Stalin introduced the First Five-Year Plan for building 
a socialist economy. In industry, the state assumed control over 
all existing enterprises and undertook an intensive program of in- 
dustrialization; in agriculture, the state appropriated the peasants' 
property to establish collective farms. These sweeping economic 
innovations produced widespread misery, and millions of peasants 
perished during forced collectivization. Social upheaval continued 
in the mid- 1930s when Stalin began a purge of the party; out of 
this purge grew a campaign of terror that led to the execution or 
imprisonment of untold millions of people from all walks of life. 
Yet despite this turmoil, the Soviet Union developed a powerful 
industrial economy in the years before World War II. 

Stalin tried to avert war with Germany by concluding the Nazi- 
Soviet Nonaggression Pact with Adolf Hider in 1939, but in 1941 
Germany invaded the Soviet Union. The Red Army stopped the 



55 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Nazi offensive at the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943 and then over- 
ran much of eastern Europe before Germany surrendered in 1945. 
Although severely ravaged in the war, the Soviet Union emerged 
from the conflict as one of the world's great powers. 

During the immediate postwar period, the Soviet Union first 
rebuilt and then expanded its economy. The Soviet Union con- 
solidated its control over postwar Eastern Europe, supplied aid 
toward the victory of the communists in China, and sought to ex- 
pand its influence elsewhere in the world. The active Soviet for- 
eign policy helped bring about the Cold War, which turned its 
wartime allies, Britain and the United States, into foes. Within 
the Soviet Union, repressive measures continued in force; Stalin 
apparently was about to launch a new purge when he died in 1953. 

In the absence of an acceptable successor, Stalin's closest associ- 
ates opted to rule the Soviet Union jointly, although behind the 
public display of collective leadership a struggle for power took place. 
Nikita S. Khrushchev, who acquired the dominant position in the 
country in the mid-1950s, denounced Stalin's use of terror and 
effectively reduced repressive controls over party and society. 
Khrushchev's reforms in agriculture and administration, however, 
were generally unproductive, and foreign policy toward China and 
the United States suffered reverses. Khrushchev's colleagues in the 
leadership removed him from power in 1964. 

Following the ouster of Khrushchev, another period of rule by 
collective leadership ensued, which lasted until Leonid I. Brezhnev 
established himself in the early 1970s as the preeminent figure in 
Soviet political life. Brezhnev presided over a period of detente with 
the West while at the same time building up Soviet military strength; 
the arms buildup contributed to the demise of detente in the late 
1970s. Also contributing to the end of detente was the Soviet inva- 
sion of Afghanistan in December 1979. 

After some experimentation with economic reforms in the mid- 
1960s, the Soviet leadership reverted to established means of eco- 
nomic management. Industry showed slow but steady gains during 
the 1970s, while agricultural development continued to lag. In con- 
trast to the revolutionary spirit that accompanied the birth of the 
Soviet Union, the prevailing mood of the Soviet leadership at the 
time of Brezhnev's death in 1982 was one of cautious conservatism 
and aversion to change. 

Revolutions and Civil War 

The February Revolution 

By early 1917, the existing order in Russia verged on collapse. 
The country's involvement in World War I had already cost millions 



56 



Historical Setting: 1917 to 1982 



of lives and caused severe disruption in Russia's backward econ- 
omy. In an effort to reverse the steadily worsening military situa- 
tion, Emperor Nicholas II commanded Russian forces at the front, 
abandoning the conduct of government in Petrograd (St. Peters- 
burg before 1914; Leningrad after 1924) to his unpopular wife and 
a series of incompetent ministers. As a consequence of these con- 
ditions, the morale of the people rapidly deteriorated. 

The spark to the events that ended tsarist rule was ignited on 
the streets of Petrograd in February 1917 (according to the old Julian 
calendar [see Glossary] then in use in Russia). Provoked by short- 
ages of food and fuel, crowds of hungry citizens and striking workers 
began spontaneous rioting and demonstrations on March 7 (Febru- 
ary 23, according to the Julian calendar). Local reserve troops, 
called in to suppress the riots, refused to fire on the crowds, and 
some soldiers joined the workers and other rioters. On March 12, 
with tsarist authority in Petrograd rapidly disintegrating, two sep- 
arate bodies emerged, each claiming to represent the Russian peo- 
ple. One was the Executive Committee of the Duma, which the 
Duma (see Glossary) had established in defiance of the tsar's orders 
of March 1 1 . The other body was the Petrograd Soviet of Work- 
ers' and Soldiers' Deputies, founded on the model of the St. Peters- 
burg Soviet of 1905. With the consent of the Petrograd Soviet, the 
Executive Committee of the Duma organized the Provisional 
Government on March 1 5 . Delegates of the new government met 
Nicholas that evening at Pskov, where rebellious railroad workers 
had stopped the imperial train as the tsar attempted to return to 
the capital. Advised by his generals that he lacked the support of 
the country, Nicholas informed the delegates that he was abdicat- 
ing in favor of his brother, Grand Duke Michael. When Michael 
in turn refused the throne on March 16 (March 3), the rule of tsars 
and emperors in Russia came to an end. 

The Period of Dual Power 

The collapse of the monarchy left two rival political institutions — 
the Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet — to share ad- 
ministrative authority over the country. The Petrograd Soviet, draw- 
ing its membership from socialist deputies elected in factories and 
regiments, coordinated the activities of other Soviets that sprang up 
across Russia at this time. The Petrograd Soviet was dominated by 
moderate socialists of the Socialist Revolutionary Party and by the 
Menshevik (see Glossary) faction of the Russian Social Democratic 
Labor Party. The Bolshevik faction of the latter party provided the 
opposition. While representing the interests of Russia's working 
classes, the Petrograd Soviet at first did not seek to undermine the 



57 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Provisional Government's authority directly. Nevertheless, the 
Petrograd Soviet's "Order No. 1" of March 14 (March 1) instructed 
soldiers and sailors to obey their officers and the government only 
if their orders did not contradict the decrees of the Petrograd Soviet, 
thereby effectively limiting the Provisional Government's control 
over the armed forces. 

The Provisional Government, in contrast to the socialist Petro- 
grad Soviet, chiefly represented the propertied classes. Headed by 
ministers of a moderate or liberal bent, the new government pledged 
to convene a constituent assembly that would usher in a new era 
of bourgeois democracy. In the meantime, the government granted 
unprecedented rights — full freedom of speech, press, and religion, 
as well as legal equality — to all citizens. The government did not 
take up the matter of land redistribution, however, leaving it for 
the constituent assembly. Even more damaging, the ministers fa- 
vored keeping Russia's military commitments to its allies, a posi- 
tion that became increasingly unpopular as the war dragged on. 
The government suffered its first crisis in the "April Days," when 
demonstrations against the government's annexationist war aims 
forced two ministers to resign, leading to the appointment of moder- 
ate socialist Aleksandr Kerensky as war minister. Kerensky, quickly 
assuming de facto leadership of the government, ordered the army 
to launch a major offensive in June, which, after early successes, 
turned into a full-scale retreat in July. 

While the Provisional Government grappled with foreign foes, 
the Bolsheviks, who were opposed to bourgeois democracy, gained 
new strength. Lenin, the Bolshevik leader, returned to Petrograd 
in April 1917 from his wartime residence in Switzerland. Although 
he had been born into a noble family, from his youth Lenin es- 
poused the cause of the common workers. A committed revolu- 
tionary and pragmatic Marxist thinker, Lenin astounded the 
Bolsheviks already in Petrograd by his April Theses, boldly calling 
for the overthrow of the Provisional Government, the transfer of 
"all power to the Soviets," and the expropriation of factories by 
workers and of land belonging to the church, the nobility, and the 
gentry by peasants. Lenin's dynamic presence quickly won the other 
Bolshevik leaders to his position, and the radicalized orientation 
of the Bolshevik faction attracted new members. Inspired by Lenin's 
slogans, crowds of workers, soldiers, and sailors took to the streets 
of Petrograd in July to wrest power from the Provisional Govern- 
ment. But the spontaneity of the "July Days" caught the Bolshevik 
leaders by surprise, and the Petrograd Soviet, controlled by moder- 
ate Mensheviks, refused to take power or enforce Bolshevik de- 
mands. After the uprising died down, the Provisional Government 



58 



Historical Setting: 1917 to 1982 



outlawed the Bolsheviks and jailed Leon Trotsky (Lev Trotskii, 
originally Lev Bronstein), an active Bolshevik leader. Lenin fled 
to Finland. 

In the aftermath of the ' 'July Days," conservatives sought to 
reassert order in society. The army's commander in chief, Gen- 
eral Lavr Kornilov, who protested the influence of the Soviets on 
both the army and the government, appeared as a counterrevolu- 
tionary threat to Kerensky, now prime minister. Kerensky dis- 
missed Kornilov from his command, but Kornilov, disobeying the 
order, launched an extemporaneous revolt on September 10 (August 
28). To defend the capital, Kerensky sought help from all quar- 
ters and relaxed his ban on Bolshevik activities. Railroad workers 
sympathetic to the Bolsheviks halted Kornilov 's troop trains, and 
Kornilov soon surrendered, ending the only serious challenge to 
the Provisional Government from the right. 

The Bolshevik Revolution 

Although the Provisional Government survived the Kornilov 
revolt, popular support for the government faded rapidly as the 
national mood swung to the left in the fall of 1917. Workers took 
control of their factories through elected committees; peasants ex- 
propriated lands belonging to the state, church, nobility, and gen- 
try; and armies melted away as peasant soldiers deserted to take 
part in the land seizures. The Bolsheviks, skillfully exploiting these 
popular trends in their propaganda, dominated the Petrograd Soviet 
and the Moscow Soviet by September, with Trotsky, freed from 
prison after the Kornilov revolt, now chairman of the Petrograd 
Soviet. 

Realizing that the time was ripe for seizing power by armed force, 
Lenin returned to Petrograd in October and convinced a majority 
of the Bolshevik Central Committee, which had hoped to take power 
legally, to accept armed uprising in principle. Trotsky won the 
Petrograd garrison over to Soviet authority, depriving the Provi- 
sional Government of its main military support in Petrograd. 

The actual insurrection — the Bolshevik Revolution — began on 
the morning of November 6 (October 24) when Kerensky ordered 
the Bolshevik press closed. Interpreting this action as a counter- 
revolutionary move, the Bolsheviks called on their supporters to 
defend the Petrograd Soviet. By evening the Bolsheviks controlled 
utilities and most government buildings in Petrograd, allowing 
Lenin to proclaim the downfall of the Provisional Government on 
the morning of November 7 (October 25). The Bolsheviks captured 
the Provisional Government's cabinet at its Winter Palace head- 
quarters that night with hardly a shot fired in the government's 



59 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

defense. Kerensky left Petrograd to organize resistance, but his 
countercoup failed and he fled Russia. Bolshevik uprisings soon 
took place elsewhere; the Bolsheviks gained control of Moscow by 
November 15 (November 2). The Second Congress of Soviets, 
meeting in Petrograd on November 7 (October 25), ratified the 
Bolshevik takeover after moderate deputies (mainly Mensheviks 
and right-wing members of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, or 
SRs) quit the session. The remaining Bolsheviks and left-wing SRs 
declared the Soviets the governing bodies of Russia and named the 
Council of People's Commissars (Sovet narodnykh komissarov — 
Sovnarkom) to serve as the cabinet. Lenin became chairman of 
this council (see table 5, Appendix A). Trotsky took the post of 
commissar of foreign affairs; Stalin, a Georgian, became commis- 
sar of nationalities. By acting decisively while their opponents vacil- 
lated, the Bolsheviks succeeded in effecting their coup d'etat. 

On coming to power, the Bolsheviks issued a series of revolu- 
tionary decrees that ratified peasants' seizures of land and work- 
ers' control of industry; abolished legal class privileges; nationalized 
the banks; and set up revolutionary tribunals in place of the courts. 
At the same time, the revolutionaries now constituting the regime 
worked to secure power inside and outside the government. Deem- 
ing Western forms of parliamentary democracy irrelevant, Lenin 
argued for a dictatorship of the proletariat (see Glossary) based on 
one-party Bolshevik rule, although for a time left-wing SRs also 
participated in the Sovnarkom. The Soviet government created a 
secret police, the Vecheka (see Glossary) to persecute enemies of 
the state (including bourgeois liberals and moderate socialists) (see 
Predecessors of the Committee for State Security and the Ministry 
of Internal Affairs, ch. 19). Having convened the Constituent As- 
sembly, which had been elected in November with the Bolsheviks 
winning only a quarter of the seats, the Soviet government dis- 
solved the assembly in January after a one-day session, ending a 
short-lived experiment in parliamentary democracy in Russia. 

In foreign affairs, the Soviet government, seeking to disengage 
Russia from the world war, called on the belligerent powers for 
an armistice and peace without annexations. The Allied Powers 
rejected this appeal, but Germany and its allies agreed to a cease- 
fire and began negotiations in December 1917. After dictating harsh 
terms that the Soviet government would not accept, however, Ger- 
many resumed its offensive in February 1918, meeting scant 
resistance from disintegrating Russian armies. Lenin, after bitter 
debate with leading Bolsheviks who favored prolonging the war 
in hopes of precipitating class warfare in Germany, persuaded a 
slim majority of the Bolshevik Central Committee that peace must 



60 



Historical Setting: 1917 to 1982 



be made at any cost. On March 3, Soviet government officials 
signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, relinquishing Poland, the Bal- 
tic lands, Finland, and Ukraine to German control and giving up 
a portion of the Caucasus region to Turkey. With the new border 
dangerously close to Petrograd, the government was soon trans- 
ferred to Moscow. An enormous part of the population and re- 
sources of the Russian Empire was lost by this treaty, but Lenin 
understood that no alternative could ensure the survival of the fledg- 
ling Soviet state. 

Civil War and War Communism 

Soon after buying peace with Germany, the Soviet state found 
itself under attack from other quarters. By the spring of 1918, ele- 
ments dissatisfied with the Communists (as the Bolsheviks started 
calling themselves, conforming with the name change from Rus- 
sian Social Democratic Labor Party to Russian Communist Party 
[Bolshevik] in March) established centers of resistance in southern 
and Siberian Russia against the Communist-controlled area (see 
fig. 4). Anti-Communists, often led by former officers of the tsarist 
army, clashed with the Red Army, founded and organized by 
Trotsky, now serving as commissar of war. A civil war to deter- 
mine the future of Russia had begun. 

The White armies (see Glossary) enjoyed, to varying degrees, 
the support of the Allied Powers. Desiring to defeat Germany in 
any way possible, Britain, France, and the United States landed 
troops in Russia and provided logistical support to the Whites, 
whom the Allies trusted to resume Russia's struggle against Ger- 
many after overthrowing the Communist regime. (Japan also sent 
troops, but with the intention of seizing territory in Siberia.) After 
the Allies defeated Germany in November 1918, they opted to con- 
tinue their intervention in the Russian Civil War against the Com- 
munists in the interests of averting world socialist revolution. 

During the Civil War, the Soviet regime also had to deal with 
struggles for independence in regions that it had given up under 
the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (which the regime immediately repu- 
diated after Germany's defeat by the Allies in November 1918). 
By force of arms, the Communists established Soviet republics in 
Belorussia (January 1919), Ukraine (March 1919), Azerbaydzhan 
(April 1920), Armenia (November 1920), and Georgia (March 1921), 
but they were unable to win back the Baltic region, where the in- 
dependent states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania had been founded 
shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution. In December 1917, during 
a civil war between Finnish Reds and Whites, the Soviet govern- 
ment recognized the independence of Finland but was disappointed 



61 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 




Source: Based on information from David MacKenzie and Michael W. Curran, A History 
of Russia and the Soviet Union, Chicago, 1987, 611. 

Figure 4. Red Army Line, March 1920 

when that country became a parliamentary republic in 1918. 
Poland, reborn after World War I, fought a successful war with 
Soviet Russia from April 1920 to March 1921 over the location 
of the frontier between the two states. 

During its struggle for survival, the Soviet state placed great hope 
on revolution's breaking out in the industrialized countries. To coor- 
dinate the socialist movement under Soviet auspices, Lenin founded 
the Communist International (Comintern) in March 1919. Although 
no successful socialist revolutions occurred elsewhere immediately 
after the Bolshevik Revolution, the Comintern provided the Com- 
munist leadership with the means through which they later controlled 
foreign communist parties. By the end of 1920, the Communists 
had clearly triumphed in the Civil War. Although in 1919 Soviet 
Russia had shrunk to the size of sixteenth-century Muscovy, the 
Red Army had the advantage of defending the heartland with 
Moscow at its center. The White armies, divided geographically and 



62 



Historical Setting: 1917 to 1982 



without a clearly defined cause, went down in defeat one by one. 
The monarchical cause was effectively killed when Communists 
shot the imperial family in July 1918. The Allied governments, 
lacking support for intervention from their war- weary citizenry, 
withdrew most of their forces by 1920. The last foreign troops 
departed Siberia in 1922, leaving the Soviet state unchallenged from 
abroad. 

During the Civil War, the Communist regime took increasingly 
repressive measures against its opponents within the country. The 
Soviet constitution of 1918 deprived members of the former "ex- 
ploiting classes" — nobles, priests, and capitalists — of civil rights. 
Left-wing SRs, formerly partners of the Bolsheviks, became tar- 
gets for persecution during the Red Terror that followed an at- 
tempt on Lenin's life in August 1918. In those desperate times, 
both Reds and Whites murdered and executed without trial large 
numbers of suspected enemies. The party also took measures to 
ensure greater discipline among its members by tightening its or- 
ganization and creating specialized administrative organs. 

In the economic life of the country, too, the Communist regime 
sought to exert control through a series of drastic measures that 
came to be known as war communism. To coordinate what re- 
mained of Russia's economic resources after years of war, in 1918 
the government nationalized industry and subordinated it to cen- 
tral administrations in Moscow. Rejecting workers' control of fac- 
tories as inefficient, the regime brought in expert managers to run 
the factories and organized and directed the factory workers as in 
a military mobilization. To feed the urban population, the Soviet 
government carried out mass requisitions of grain from the 
peasantry. 

The results of war communism were unsatisfactory. Industrial 
production continued to fall. Workers received wages in kind be- 
cause inflation had made the ruble practically worthless. In the 
countryside, peasants rebelled against payments in valueless money 
by curtailing or consuming their agricultural production. In late 
1920, strikes broke out in the industrial centers, and peasant up- 
risings sprang up across the land as famine ravaged the country- 
side. To the Soviet government, however, the most disquieting 
manifestation of dissatisfaction with war communism was the re- 
bellion in March 1921 of sailors at the naval base at Kronshtadt 
(near Petrograd), which had earlier won renown as a bastion of 
the Bolshevik Revolution. Although Trotsky and the Red Army 
succeeded in putting down the mutiny, the rebellion signaled to 
the party leadership that the austere policies of war communism 
had to be abolished. The harsh legacy of the Civil War period, 



63 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



however, would have a profound influence on the future develop- 
ment of the country. 

The Era of the New Economic Policy 

Lenin's Leadership 

While the Kronshtadt base rebelled against the severe policies 
of war communism, the Tenth Party Congress of the Russian Com- 
munist Party (Bolshevik) met in March 1921 to hear Lenin argue 
for a new course in Soviet policy. Lenin realized that the radical 
approach to communism was unsuited to existing conditions and 
jeopardized the survival of his regime. Now the Soviet leader pro- 
posed a tactical retreat, convincing the congress to adopt a tem- 
porary compromise with capitalism under the program that came 
to be known as the New Economic Policy (NEP). Under NEP, 
market forces and the monetary system regained their importance. 
The state scrapped its policy of grain requisitioning in favor of tax- 
ation, permitting peasants to dispose of their produce as they 
pleased. NEP also denationalized service enterprises and much 
small-scale industry, leaving the "commanding heights" of the 
economy — large-scale industry, transportation, and foreign trade — 
under state control. Under the mixed economy of NEP, agricul- 
ture and industry staged recoveries, with most branches of the econ- 
omy attaining prewar levels of production by the late 1920s. In 
general, standards of living improved during this time, and the 
"NEP man" — the independent private trader — became a symbol 
of the era. 

About the time that the party sanctioned partial decentraliza- 
tion of the economy, it also approved a quasi-federal structure for 
the state. During the Civil War years, the non-Russian nationali- 
ties on the periphery of the former Russian Empire were theoreti- 
cally independent, but in fact Moscow attempted to control them 
through the party and the Red Army. Some Communists favored 
a centralized Soviet state, while nationalists wanted autonomy for 
the borderlands. A compromise between the two positions was 
reached in December 1922 by the formation of the Union of Soviet 
Socialist Republics. The constituent republics of this Soviet Union 
(the Russian, Belorussian, Ukrainian, and Transcaucasian repub- 
lics) exercised a degree of cultural and linguistic autonomy, while 
the Communist, predominantly Russian, leadership in Moscow 
retained political authority over the entire country. 

The party consolidated its authority throughout the country, be- 
coming a monolithic presence in state and society. Potential rivals 
outside the party, including prominent members of the abolished 



64 



Historical Setting: 1917 to 1982 



Menshevik faction and the Socialist Revolutionary Party, were exiled. 
Within the party, Lenin denounced the formation of factions, 
particularly by radical-left party members. Central party organs 
subordinated local Soviets under their authority. Purges of party 
members periodically removed the less committed from the rosters. 
The Politburo (see Glossary) created the new post of general secre- 
tary for supervising personnel matters and assigned Stalin to this 
office in April 1922. Stalin, a minor member of the Central Com- 
mittee at the time of the Bolshevik Revolution, was thought to be 
a rather lackluster personality and therefore well suited to the rou- 
tine work required of the general secretary. 

From the time of the Bolshevik Revolution and into the early 
NEP years, the actual leader of the Soviet state was Lenin. Although 
a collective of prominent Communists nominally guided the party 
and the Soviet Union, Lenin commanded such prestige and author- 
ity that even such brilliant theoreticians as Trotsky and Nikolai I. 
Bukharin generally yielded to his will. But when Lenin became 
temporarily incapacitated after a stroke in May 1922, the unity 
of the Politburo fractured, and a troika (triumvirate) formed by 
Stalin, Lev B. Kamenev, and Grigorii V. Zinov'ev assumed leader- 
ship in opposition to Trotsky. Lenin recovered late in 1922 and 
found fault with the troika, and particularly with Stalin. Stalin, 
in Lenin's view, had used coercion to force non-Russian republics 
to join the Soviet Union; he was "rude"; and he was accumulat- 
ing too much power through his office of general secretary. Although 
Lenin recommended that Stalin be removed from that position, 
the Politburo decided not to take action, and Stalin remained gen- 
eral secretary when Lenin died in January 1924. 

As important as Lenin's activities were to the foundation of the 
Soviet Union, his legacy to the Soviet future was perhaps even more 
significant. By willingly changing his policies to suit new situations, 
Lenin had developed a pragmatic interpretation of Marxism (later 
called Marxism-Leninism — see Glossary) that implied that the party 
should follow any course that would ultimately lead to communism. 
His party, while still permitting intraorganizational debate, insisted 
that its members adhere to its decisions once they were adopted, 
in accordance with the principle of democratic centralism (see Glos- 
sary). Finally, because his party embodied the dictatorship of the 
proletariat, organized opposition could not be tolerated, and ad- 
versaries would be prosecuted (see Lenin's Conception of the Party, 
ch. 7). Thus, although the Soviet regime was not totalitarian when 
he died, Lenin had nonetheless laid the foundations upon which 
such a tyranny might later arise. 



65 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Stalin's Rise to Power 

After Lenin's death, two conflicting schools of thought regard- 
ing the future of the Soviet Union arose in party debates. Left- 
wing Communists believed that world revolution was essential for 
the survival of socialism in the economically backward Soviet Union. 
Trotsky, one of the primary proponents of this position, called for 
Soviet support for permanent revolution (see Glossary) around the 
world. As for domestic policy, the left wing advocated the rapid 
development of the economy and the creation of a socialist soci- 
ety. In contrast with these militant Communists, the right wing 
of the party, recognizing that world revolution was unlikely in the 
immediate future, favored the gradual development of the Soviet 
Union through NEP programs. Yet even Bukharin, one of the 
major right-wing theoreticians, believed that socialism could not 
triumph in the Soviet Union without assistance from more eco- 
nomically advanced socialist countries. 

Against this backdrop of contrasting perceptions of the Soviet 
future, the leading figures of the Ail-Union Communist Party 
(Bolshevik) — the new name of the Russian Communist Party 
(Bolshevik) as of December 1925 — competed for influence. The 
Kamenev-Zinov'ev- Stalin troika, supporting the militant interna- 
tional program, successfully maneuvered against Trotsky and en- 
gineered his removal as commissar of war in 1925. In the meantime, 
Stalin gradually consolidated his power base and, when he had suffi- 
cient strength, broke with Kamenev and Zinov'ev. Belatedly recog- 
nizing Stalin's political power, Kamenev and Zinov'ev made 
amends with Trotsky to join against their former partner. But Stalin 
countered their attacks on his position with his well-timed formu- 
lation of the theory of "socialism in one country." This doctrine, 
calling for construction of a socialist society in the Soviet Union 
regardless of the international situation, distanced Stalin from the 
left and won support from Bukharin and the party's right wing. 
With this support, Stalin ousted the leaders of the "Left Opposi- 
tion" from their positions in 1926 and 1927 and forced Trotsky 
into exile. By the end of the NEP era, free debate within the party 
thus became progressively limited as Stalin gradually eliminated 
his opponents. 

Foreign Policy, 1921-28 

In the 1920s, as the new Soviet state temporarily retreated from 
the revolutionary path to socialism, the party also adopted a less 
ideological approach in its relations with the rest of the world. Lenin, 
ever the practical leader, having become convinced that socialist 



66 



Historical Setting: 1917 to 1982 



revolution would not break out in other countries in the near fu- 
ture, realized that his government required normal relations with 
the Western world for it to survive. Not only were good relations 
important for national security, but the economy also required trade 
with the industrial countries. Blocking Soviet attainment of these 
desires were lingering suspicions of communism on the part of the 
Western powers and concern over the foreign debts incurred by 
the tsarist government that the Soviet government had unilaterally 
canceled. In April 1922, the Soviet commissar of foreign affairs, 
Georgii Chicherin, circumvented these difficulties by achieving an 
understanding with Germany, the other pariah state of Europe, 
at Rapallo, Italy. In the Treaty of Rapallo, Germany and Russia 
agreed on mutual recognition, cancellation of debt claims, normali- 
zation of trade relations, and secret cooperation in military develop- 
ment. After concluding the treaty, the Soviet Union soon obtained 
diplomatic recognition from other major powers, beginning with 
Britain in February 1924. Although the United States withheld 
recognition until 1933, private American firms began to extend 
technological assistance and develop commercial links beginning 
in the 1920s. 

Toward the non- Western world, the Soviet leadership limited 
its policy to promoting opposition among the indigenous popula- 
tions against imperialist exploitation. Moscow did pursue an ac- 
tive policy in China, aiding the rise of the Nationalist Party, a 
non-Marxist organization committed to reform and national 
sovereignty. After the triumph of the Nationalists, a debate deve- 
loped among Soviet leaders concerning the future status of rela- 
tions with China. Stalin wanted the Chinese Communist Party to 
join the Nationalists and infiltrate the government from within, 
while Trotsky proposed an armed communist uprising and forci- 
ble imposition of socialism in that country. Although Stalin's plan 
was finally accepted, it came to nought when in 1926 the Nation- 
alist leader Chiang Kai-shek ordered the Chinese communists mas- 
sacred and Soviet advisers expelled. 

Society and Culture in the 1920s 

In many respects, the NEP period was a time of relative free- 
dom and experimentation for the social and cultural life of the Soviet 
Union. The government tolerated a variety of trends in these fields, 
provided they were not overtly hostile to the regime. In art and 
literature, numerous schools, some traditional and others radically 
experimental, proliferated. Communist writers Maksim Gorky and 
Vladimir Maiakovskii were active during this time, but other 
authors, many of whose works were later repressed, published work 



67 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

lacking socialist political content. Film, as a means of influencing 
a largely illiterate society, received encouragement from the state; 
much of cinematographer Sergei Eisenstein's best work dates from 
this period. 

Education, under Commissar Anatolii Lunacharskii, entered a 
phase of experimentation based on progressive theories of learn- 
ing. At the same time, the state expanded the primary and second- 
ary school system and introduced night schools for working adults. 
The quality of higher education suffered, however, because admis- 
sions policies preferred entrants from the proletarian class over those 
of bourgeois backgrounds, regardless of the applicants' qualifi- 
cations. 

Under NEP the state eased its active persecution of religion begun 
during war communism but continued to agitate on behalf of athe- 
ism. The party supported the Living Church reform movement 
within the Russian Orthodox Church in hopes that it would under- 
mine faith in the church, but the movement died out in the late 
1920s. 

In family life, attitudes generally became more permissive. The 
state legalized abortion, and it made divorce progressively easier 
to obtain. In general, traditional attitudes toward such institutions 
as marriage were subtly undermined by the party's promotion of 
revolutionary ideals. 

Transformation and Terror 

Industrialization and Collectivization 

At the end of the 1920s, a dramatic new phase in economic de- 
velopment began when Stalin decided to carry out a program of 
intensive socialist construction. To some extent, Stalin chose to ad- 
vocate accelerated economic development at this point as a politi- 
cal maneuver to eliminate rivals within the party. Because Bukharin 
and some other party members would not give up the gradualistic 
NEP in favor of radical development, Stalin branded them as 
"right-wing deviationists" and used the party organization to re- 
move them from influential positions in 1929 and 1930. Yet Stalin's 
break with NEP also revealed that his doctrine of building ' ' so- 
cialism in one country' ' paralleled the line that Trotsky had origi- 
nally supported early in the 1920s. Marxism supplied no basis for 
Stalin's model of a planned economy, although the centralized eco- 
nomic controls of the war communism years seemingly furnished 
a Leninist precedent. Nonetheless, between 1927 and 1929 the State 
Planning Commission (Gosplan — see Glossary) worked out the First 
Five- Year Plan for intensive economic growth; Stalin began to 
implement this plan — his "revolution from above" — in 1928. 



68 



Historical Setting: 1917 to 1982 



The First Five-Year Plan called for rapid industrialization of the 
economy, with particular growth in heavy industry. The economy 
was centralized: small-scale industry and services were national- 
ized, managers strove to fulfill Gosplan's output quotas, and the 
trade unions were converted into mechanisms for increasing worker 
productivity. But because Stalin insisted on unrealistic production 
targets, serious problems soon arose. With the greatest share of 
investment put into heavy industry, widespread shortages of con- 
sumer goods occurred, and inflation grew. 

To satisfy the state's need for increased food supplies, the First 
Five-Year Plan called for the organization of the peasantry into 
collective units that the authorities could easily control. This col- 
lectivization program entailed compounding the peasants' lands 
and animals into collective farms (see Glossary) and state farms 
(see Glossary) and restricting the peasants' movements from these 
farms, thus in effect reintroducing a kind of serfdom into the coun- 
tryside. Although the program was designed to affect all peasants, 
Stalin in particular sought to liquidate the wealthiest peasants, the 
kulaks. Generally speaking, the kulaks were only marginally bet- 
ter off than other peasants, but the party claimed that the kulaks 
ensnared the rest of the peasantry in capitalistic relationships. Yet 
collectivization met widespread resistance not only from kulaks but 
from poorer peasants as well, and a desperate struggle of the peasan- 
try against the authorities ensued. Peasants slaughtered their cows 
and pigs rather than turn them over to the collective farms, with 
the result that livestock resources remained below the 1929 level 
for years afterward. The state in turn forcibly collectivized reluc- 
tant peasants and deported kulaks and active rebels to Siberia. 
Within the collective farms, the authorities in many instances 
exacted such high levels of procurements that starvation was 
widespread. In some places, famine was allowed to run its course; 
millions of peasants in the Ukrainian Republic starved to death 
when the state deliberately withheld food shipments. 

By 1932 Stalin realized that both the economy and society were 
seriously overstrained. Although industry failed to meet its produc- 
tion targets and agriculture actually lost ground in comparison with 
1928 yields, Stalin declared that the First Five-Year Plan had suc- 
cessfully met its goals in four years. He then proceeded to set more 
realistic goals. Under the Second Five-Year Plan (1933-37), the 
state devoted attention to consumer goods, and the factories built 
during the first plan helped increase industrial output in general. 
The Third Five-Year Plan, begun in 1938, produced poorer results 
because of a sudden shift of emphasis to armaments production 
in response to the worsening international climate. All in all, 



69 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

however, the Soviet economy had become industrialized by the end 
of the 1930s. Agriculture, which had been exploited to finance the 
industrialization drive, continued to show poor returns through- 
out the decade. 

The Period of the Purges 

The complete subjugation of the party to Stalin, its leader, 
paralleled the subordination of industry and agriculture to the state. 
After squelching Bukharin and the "right-wing deviationists" in 
1929 and 1930, Stalin's position was assured. To secure his abso- 
lute control over the party, however, Stalin began to purge from 
party ranks those leaders and their followers whose loyalty he 
doubted. 

The period of Stalin's purges began in December 1934 when 
Sergei Kirov, a popular Leningrad party chief who advocated a 
moderate policy toward the peasants, was assassinated. Although 
details remain murky, many Western historians believe that Stalin 
instigated the murder to rid himself of a potential opponent. In any 
event, in the resultant mass purge of the local Leningrad party, thou- 
sands were deported to camps in Siberia. Zinov'ev and Kamenev, 
Stalin's former political partners, received prison sentences for their 
alleged role in Kirov's murder. At the same time, the NKVD (see 
Glossary), the secret police, stepped up surveillance through its agents 
and informers and claimed to uncover anti-Soviet conspiracies among 
prominent long-term party members. At three publicized show trials 
held in Moscow between 1936 and 1938, dozens of these Old Bolshe- 
viks, including Zinov'ev, Kamenev, and Bukharin, confessed to im- 
probable crimes against the Soviet state and were executed. (The 
last of Stalin's old enemies, Trotsky, who had supposedly master- 
minded the conspiracies against Stalin from abroad, was murdered 
in Mexico in 1940, presumably by the NKVD.) Coincident with 
the show trials against the original leadership of the party, unpubli- 
cized purges swept through the ranks of younger leaders in party, 
government, industrial management, and cultural affairs. Party 
purges in the non-Russian republics were particularly severe. The 
Ezhovshchina ("era of Ezhov," named for NKVD chief Nikolai 
Ezhov) ravaged the military as well, leading to the execution or in- 
carceration of about half the entire military officer corps. The secret 
police also terrorized the general populace, with untold numbers 
of common people punished for spurious crimes. By the time the 
purges subsided in 1938, millions of Soviet leaders, officials, and 
other citizens had been executed, imprisoned, or exiled. 

The reasons for this period of widespread purges remain unclear. 
Western historians variously hypothesize that Stalin created the 



70 



Historical Setting: 1917 to 1982 



terror out of a desire to goad the population to carry out his inten- 
sive modernization program, or to atomize society to preclude 
dissent, or simply out of brutal paranoia. Whatever the causes, 
the purges must be viewed as a counterproductive episode that 
weakened the Soviet state and caused incalculable suffering. 

In 1936, just as the purges were intensifying the Great Terror 
(see Glossary), Stalin approved a new Soviet constitution to replace 
that of 1924. Hailed as "the most democratic constitution in the 
world," the 1936 document stipulated free and secret elections based 
on universal suffrage and guaranteed the citizenry a range of civil 
and economic rights. But in practice the freedoms implied by these 
rights were denied by provisions elsewhere in the constitution that 
indicated that the basic structure of Soviet society could not be 
changed and that the party retained all political power (see Early 
Soviet Constitutions, ch. 8). 

The power of the party, in turn, now was concentrated in the 
persons of Stalin and his handpicked Politburo. Symbolic of the 
lack of influence of the party rank and file, party congresses (see 
Glossary) met less and less frequently. State power, far from 
"withering away" after the revolution as Karl Marx had predicted, 
instead grew in strength. Stalin's personal dictatorship found reflec- 
tion in the adulation that surrounded him; the reverence accorded 
Stalin in Soviet society gradually eclipsed that given to Lenin. 

Mobilization of Society 

Concomitant with industrialization and collectivization, society 
also experienced wide-ranging regimentation. Collective enterprises 
replaced individualistic efforts across the board: not only did the 
regime abolish private farms and businesses, but it collectivized 
scientific and literary endeavors as well. As the 1930s progressed, 
the revolutionary experimentation that had characterized many 
facets of cultural and social life gave way to conservative norms. 

Considerations of order and discipline dominated social policy, 
which became an instrument for the modernization effort. Work- 
ers came under strict labor codes demanding punctuality and dis- 
cipline, and labor unions served as extensions of the industrial 
ministries. At the same time, higher pay and privileges accrued 
to productive workers and labor brigades. To provide greater so- 
cial stability, the state aimed to strengthen the family by restrict- 
ing divorce and abolishing abortion. 

Literature and the arts came under direct party control during 
the 1930s as mandatory membership in unions of writers, musi- 
cians, and other artists entailed adherence to established standards. 
After 1934, the party dictated that creative works had to express 



71 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

socialistic spirit through traditional forms. This officially sanctioned 
doctrine, called socialist realism (see Glossary), applied to all fields 
of artistic endeavor. The state repressed works that were stylisti- 
cally innovative or lacked appropriate content. 

The party also subjected science and the liberal arts to its scru- 
tiny. Development of scientific theory in a number of fields had 
to be based upon the party's understanding of the Marxist dialec- 
tic, which derailed serious research in certain disciplines. The party 
took a more active role in directing work in the social sciences. In 
the writing of history, the orthodox Marxist interpretation employed 
in the late 1920s was modified to include nationalistic themes and 
to stress the role of great leaders to foster legitimacy for Stalin's 
dictatorship. 

Education returned to traditional forms as the party discarded 
the experimental programs of Lunacharskii after 1929. Admission 
procedures underwent modification: candidates for higher educa- 
tion now were selected by their academic records, rather than by 
class origins. 

Religion suffered from a state policy of increased repression, start- 
ing with the closure of numerous churches in 1929. Persecution 
of clergy was particularly severe during the purges of the late 1930s, 
when many of the faithful went underground. 

Foreign Policy, 1928-39 

Soviet foreign policy underwent a series of changes during the 
first decade of Stalin's rule. Soon after assuming control of the party, 
Stalin oversaw a radicalization of Soviet foreign policy that com- 
plemented his strenuous domestic policies. To heighten the urgency 
of his demands for modernization, Stalin portrayed the Western 
powers, particularly France, as warmongers eager to attack the 
Soviet Union. The diplomatic isolation practiced by the Soviet 
Union in the early 1930s seemed ideologically justified by the Great 
Depression; world capitalism appeared destined for destruction. 
To aid the triumph of communism, Stalin resolved to weaken the 
moderate social democrats of Europe, the communists' rivals for 
working-class support. Conversely, the Comintern ordered the 
Communist Party of Germany to aid the anti-Soviet National So- 
cialist German Workers' Party (the Nazi Party) in its bid for power 
in the hopes that a Nazi regime would exacerbate social tensions 
and produce conditions that would lead to a communist revolu- 
tion in Germany. Stalin thus shares responsibility for Hitler's rise 
to power in 1933 and its tragic consequences for the Soviet Union 
and the rest of the world. 



72 



Historical Setting: 1917 to 1982 



The dynamics of Soviet foreign relations changed drastically after 
Stalin recognized the danger posed by Nazi Germany. From 1934 
through 1937, the Soviet Union tried to restrain German militarism 
by building coalitions hostile to fascism. In the international com- 
munist movement, the Comintern adopted the popular front (see 
Glossary) policy of cooperation with socialists and liberals against 
fascism, thus reversing its line of the early 1930s. In 1934 the Soviet 
Union joined the League of Nations, where Maksim M. Litvinov, 
the commissar of foreign affairs, advocated disarmament and col- 
lective security against fascist aggression. In 1935 the Soviet Union 
concluded defensive military alliances with France and Czecho- 
slovakia, and from 1936 to 1939 it gave assistance to antifascists 
in the Spanish Civil War. The menace of fascist militarism to the 
Soviet Union increased when Germany and Japan (itself a threat 
to Soviet Far Eastern territory in the 1930s) signed the Anti- 
Comintern Pact in 1936. But the West proved unwilling to counter 
German provocative behavior, and after France and Britain ac- 
quiesced to Hider's demands for Czechoslovak territory at Munich 
in 1938, Stalin abandoned his efforts to forge a collective security 
agreement with the West. 

Convinced now that the West would not fight Hitler, Stalin de- 
cided to come to an understanding with Germany. Signaling a shift 
in foreign policy, Viacheslav Molotov, Stalin's loyal assistant, re- 
placed Litvinov (who was Jewish) as commissar of foreign affairs 
in May 1939. Hitler, who had decided to attack Poland despite the 
guarantees of Britain and France to defend that country, soon re- 
sponded to the changed Soviet stance. While Britain and France 
dilatorily attempted to induce the Soviet Union to join them in pledg- 
ing to protect Poland, the Soviet Union and Germany engaged in 
intensive negotiations. The product of the talks between the former 
ideological foes — the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact of August 23, 
1939 — shocked the world. The open provisions of the agreement 
pledged absolute neutrality in the event one of the parties should 
become involved in war, while a secret protocol partitioned Poland 
between the parties and assigned Romanian territory as well as 
Estonia and Latvia (and later Lithuania) to the Soviet sphere of in- 
fluence. With his eastern flank thus secured, Hitler began the Ger- 
man invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939; Britain and France 
declared war on Germany two days later. World War II had begun. 

War Years 

Prelude to War 

When German troops invaded Poland, the Soviet Union was 
ill prepared to enter a major war. Although military expenditures 



73 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

had increased dramatically during the 1930s and the standing army 
was expanded in 1939, Soviet weaponry was inferior to that of the 
German army. More important, the purges had deprived the armed 
services of many capable leaders, resulting in diminished morale 
and effectiveness. The time gained through the pact with the Na- 
zis was therefore critical to the development of Soviet defenses, par- 
ticularly after Hider' s forces had overrun much of western Europe, 
against little resistance, by the summer of 1940. 

To strengthen its western frontier, the Soviet Union quickly se- 
cured the territory located in its sphere of interest. Soviet forces 
seized eastern Poland in September 1939; entered Estonia, Latvia, 
and Lithuania (which were later converted into Soviet republics) 
in October 1939; and seized the Romanian territories of Bessarabia 
(later incorporated into the Moldavian Republic) and northern 
Bukovina (later added to the Ukrainian Republic) in June 1940. 
Only Finland resisted Stalin's program of expansion, first by refus- 
ing to cede territory and then by putting up a determined defense 
when the Red Army invaded in November 1939. Although the 
Soviet Union finally won its original demands in March 1940, the 
Soviet-Finnish War (also known as the Winter War) pointed out 
grave deficiencies in Soviet military capabilities, which Hitler un- 
doubtedly noted. 

As the European war continued and the theaters of the conflict 
widened, Hitler began to chafe under his pact with the Soviet 
Union. The German dictator refused to grant Stalin a free hand 
in the Balkans and instead moved the German forces deeper into 
eastern Europe and strengthened his ties with Finland. Hider thus 
prepared for war against the Soviet Union under a plan that he 
officially approved in December 1940. Stalin, however, apparendy 
believed that the Soviet Union could avert war by not offending 
Germany. The Soviet Union continued its regular shipments of 
resources to Germany and maintained its armed forces at a low 
stage of readiness. But despite Stalin's efforts to mollify Hider, Ger- 
many declared war on the Soviet Union just as 180 German divi- 
sions swept across the border early on the morning of June 22, 1941 . 

The Great Patriotic War 

The German blitzkrieg nearly succeeded in defeating the Soviet 
Union within the first months. The Soviet forces, caught unpre- 
pared, lost whole armies and vast quantities of equipment to the 
German onslaught in the first weeks of the war, By November the 
German army had seized the Ukrainian Republic, begun its siege 
of Leningrad, and threatened the security of Moscow itself (see 
fig. 5). The Great Patriotic War, as the Soviet Union calls the phase 



74 



Historical Setting: 1917 to 1982 



of World War II involving that country, thus began inauspiciously 
for the Soviet Union. 

By the end of 1941, however, the German forces had lost their 
momentum. Harsh winter weather, attacks from bands of parti- 
sans, and difficulties in obtaining supplies over long distances re- 
stricted German movements. At the same time the Red Army, after 
recovering from the initial blow, launched its first counterattacks 
against the invaders in December. To ensure the army's ability 
to fight the war, the Soviet authorities evacuated thousands of fac- 
tories and key personnel from the war zone to the interior of the 
country, where the plants began producing war materiel. Finally, 
the country was bolstered by the prospect of receiving assistance 
from Britain and the United States. 

After a lull in active hostilities during the winter of 1941-42, 
the German army renewed its offensive, scoring a number of vic- 
tories in the Ukrainian Republic, Crimea, and southern Russia 
in the first half of 1942. Then, in an effort to gain control of the 
lower Volga River region, the German forces attempted to cap- 
ture the city of Stalingrad (present-day Volgograd) on the west bank 
of the river. Here, Soviet forces put up fierce resistance even after 
Hitler's determined actions to take the city had reduced it to rub- 
ble. Finally, Soviet forces led by General Georgii K. Zhukov sur- 
rounded the German attackers and forced their surrender in 
February 1943. The Soviet victory at Stalingrad proved decisive; 
after losing this battle the Germans lacked the strength to sustain 
their offensive operations against the Soviet Union. 

After Stalingrad, the Soviet Union held the initiative for the rest 
of the war. By the end of 1943, the Red Army had broken through 
the German siege of Leningrad and recaptured much of the Ukrain- 
ian Republic. By the end of 1944, the front had moved beyond 
the 1939 Soviet frontiers into eastern Europe. With a decisive su- 
periority in troops and weaponry, Soviet forces drove into eastern 
Germany, capturing Berlin in May 1945. The war with Germany 
thus ended triumphantly for the Soviet Union. 

In gaining the victory, the Soviet government had to rely on the 
support of the people. To increase popular enthusiasm for the war, 
Stalin changed his domestic policies to heighten patriotic spirit. Na- 
tionalistic slogans replaced much of the communist rhetoric in offi- 
cial pronouncements and the mass media. Active persecution of 
religion ceased, and in 1943 Stalin allowed the Russian Orthodox 
Church to name a patriarch after the office had stood vacant for 
nearly two decades. In the countryside, authorities permitted greater 
freedom on the collective farms. Harsh German rule in the occupied 
territories also aided the Soviet cause. Nazi administrators of 



75 




Source: Based on information from David MacKenzie and Michael W. Curran, A History 
of Russia and the Soviet Union, Chicago, 1987, 742. 



Figure 5. Military Operations Against Germany, 1941-45 

conquered Soviet territories made little attempt to exploit the popu- 
lation 's dissatisfaction with Soviet political and economic policies. 
Instead, the Nazis preserved the collective- farm system, systemat- 
ically carried out genocidal policies against Jews, and deported 
others (mainly Ukrainians) to work in Germany. Under these cir- 
cumstances, the great majority of the Soviet people fought and 
worked on their country's behalf, thus ensuring the regime's sur- 
vival. 

The war with Germany also brought about a temporary alliance 
with the two greatest powers in the " imperialist camp," namely, 
Britain and the United States. Despite deep-seated mistrust between 



76 



Historical Setting: 1917 to 1982 



the Western democracies and the Soviet state, the demands of war 
made cooperation critical. The Soviet Union benefited from ship- 
ments of weaponry and equipment from the Western Allies; dur- 
ing the course of the war the United States alone furnished supplies 
worth over US$1 1 billion. At the same time, by engaging consider- 
able German resources, the Soviet Union gave the United States 
and Britain time to prepare to invade German-occupied western 
Europe. Relations began to sour, however, when the war turned 
in the Allies' favor. The postponement of the European invasion 
to June 1944 became a source of irritation to Stalin, whose coun- 
try meanwhile bore the brunt of the struggle with Germany. Then, 
as Soviet armies pushed into eastern Europe, the question of the 
postwar order increased the friction within the coalition. At the 
Yalta Conference in February 1945, Stalin clashed with President 
Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill over 
his plans to extend Soviet influence to Poland after the war. At 
the same time, however, Stalin promised to join the war against 
Japan ninety days after Germany had been defeated. Breaking the 
neutrality pact that the Soviet Union had concluded with Japan 
in April 1941 , the Red Army entered the war in East Asia several 
days before Japan surrendered in August 1945. Now, with all com- 
mon enemies defeated, little remained to preserve the alliance be- 
tween the Western democracies and the Soviet Union. 

The end of World War II saw the Soviet Union emerge as one 
of the world's two great military powers. Its battle-tested forces 
occupied most of postwar Eastern Europe. The Soviet Union won 
island holdings from Japan and further concessions from Finland 
(which had joined in the German invasion in 1941) in addition to 
the territories the Soviet Union had seized as a consequence of the 
Nazi- Soviet Nonaggression Pact. But these achievements had been 
bought at a high cost. An estimated 20 million Soviet soldiers and 
civilians perished in the war, the heaviest loss of life of any of the 
combatant countries. The war also inflicted severe material losses 
throughout the vast territory that had been included in the war 
zone. The suffering and losses resulting from the war made a last- 
ing impression on the Soviet people and leaders that cannot be over- 
looked. 

Reconstruction and Cold War 

Reconstruction Years 

Although the Soviet Union was victorious in World War II, its 
economy had been devastated in the struggle. Roughly a quarter 
of the country's capital resources had been destroyed, and industrial 



77 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

and agricultural output in 1945 fell far short of prewar levels. To 
help rebuild the country, the Soviet government obtained limited 
credits from Britain and Sweden but refused economic assistance 
proposed by the United States under the Marshall Plan. Instead, 
the Soviet Union compelled Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe to sup- 
ply machinery and raw materials. Germany and former Nazi satel- 
lites (including Finland) made reparations to the Soviet Union. The 
Soviet people bore much of the cost of rebuilding because the recon- 
struction program emphasized heavy industry while neglecting 
agriculture and consumer goods. By the time of Stalin's death in 
1953, steel production was twice its 1940 level, but the production 
of many consumer goods and foodstuffs was lower than it had been 
in the late 1920s. 

During the postwar reconstruction period, Stalin tightened 
domestic controls, justifying the repression by playing up the threat 
of war with the West. Many repatriated Soviet citizens who had 
lived abroad during the war, whether as prisoners of war, forced 
laborers, or defectors, were executed or sent to prison camps. The 
limited freedoms granted in wartime to the church and to collec- 
tive farmers were revoked. The party tightened its admission stan- 
dards and purged many who had become party members during 
the war. 

In 1946 Andrei Zhdanov, a close associate of Stalin, helped 
launch an ideological campaign designed to demonstrate the su- 
periority of socialism over capitalism in all fields. This campaign, 
colloquially known as the Zhdanovshchina (era of Zhdanov), at- 
tacked writers, composers, economists, historians, and scientists 
whose work allegedly manifested Western influence. Although 
Zhdanov died in 1948, the cultural purge continued for several years 
afterward, stifling Soviet intellectual development. Another cam- 
paign, related to the Zhdanovshchina, lauded the real or purported 
achievements of past and present Russian inventors and scientists. 
In this intellectual climate, the genetic theories of biologist Trofim 
D. Lysenko, which were supposedly derived from Marxist princi- 
ples but lacked scientific bases, were imposed upon Soviet science 
to the detriment of research and agricultural development. The 
anticosmopolitan trends of these years adversely affected Jewish 
cultural and scientific figures in particular. In general, a pronounced 
sense of Russian nationalism, as opposed to socialist consciousness, 
pervaded Soviet society. 

The Cold War 

After World War II, the Soviet Union and its Western allies soon 
parted ways as mutual suspicions of the other's intentions and 



78 



Monument at Babi Yar, Kiev, 
Ukrainian Republic, in 
memory of the more than 
100,000 Soviet citizens 
murdered by German 
troops during World War II 
Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 




actions flourished. Eager to consolidate influence over a number 
of countries near the Soviet Union, Stalin pursued aggressive poli- 
cies after World War II that provoked strong Western reaction. 
The United States worked to contain Soviet expansion in this period 
of international relations that has come to be known as the Cold 
War. 

Mindful of the numerous invasions of Russia and the Soviet 
Union from the West throughout history, Stalin sought to create 
a buffer zone of subservient East European countries, most of which 
the Red Army (known as the Soviet armed forces after 1946) had 
occupied in the course of the war. Taking advantage of its mili- 
tary occupation of these countries, the Soviet Union actively as- 
sisted local communist parties in coming to power. By 1948 seven 
East European countries had communist governments. The Soviet 
Union initially maintained control behind the "iron curtain" (to 
use Churchill's phrase) through troops, security police, and its diplo- 
matic service. Unequal trade agreements with the East European 
countries permitted the Soviet Union access to valued resources. 

Soviet actions in Eastern Europe helped produce Western hostility 
toward their former ally, but the Western powers could do noth- 
ing to halt consolidation of Soviet authority in that region short 
of going to war. However, the United States and its allies had greater 
success in halting Soviet expansion in areas where Soviet influence 
was more tenuous. British and American diplomatic support for Iran 



79 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

forced the Soviet Union to withdraw its troops from the northeastern 
part of that country in 1946. Soviet efforts to acquire territory from 
Turkey and establish a communist government in Greece were 
stymied when the United States extended military and economic 
support to those countries under the Truman Doctrine in 1947. 
Later that year, the United States introduced the Marshall Plan 
for the economic recovery of other countries of Europe. The Soviet 
Union forbade the countries it dominated from taking part in the 
program, and the Marshall Plan contributed to reducing Soviet 
influence in the participating West European nations. 

Tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union be- 
came especially strained over the issue of Germany. At the Potsdam 
Conference of July- August 1945, the Allied Powers confirmed their 
decision to divide Germany and the city of Berlin into zones of 
occupation (with the eastern sectors placed under Soviet adminis- 
tration) until such time as the Allies would permit Germany to es- 
tablish a central government. Disagreements between the Soviet 
Union and the Western Allies soon arose over their respective oc- 
cupation policies and the matter of reparations. In June 1948, the 
Soviet Union cut off the West's land access to the American, Brit- 
ish, and French sectors of Berlin in retaliation for steps taken by 
the United States and Britain to unite Germany. Britain and the 
United States thereupon sponsored an airlift to keep the beleaguered 
sectors provisioned until the Soviet Union lifted the blockade in 
May 1949. Following the Berlin blockade, the West and the Soviet 
Union divided Germany into two countries, one oriented to the 
West, the other to the East. The crisis also provided the catalyst 
for the Western countries in 1949 to form the North Atlantic Treaty 
Organization (NATO), a collective security system designed to use 
conventional armies and nuclear weapons to offset Soviet forces. 

While the Soviet Union gained a new satellite nation in the Ger- 
man Democratic Republic (East Germany), it lost its influence in 
Yugoslavia. The local communists in Yugoslavia had come into 
power without Soviet assistance, and their leader, Josip Broz Tito, 
refused to subordinate the country to Stalin's control. Tito's defi- 
ance led the Communist Information Bureau (Cominform — 
founded in 1947 to partially replace the Comintern, which had been 
abolished in 1943) to expel the Yugoslav party from the interna- 
tional communist movement in 1948. To guard against the rise 
of other independent leaders, Stalin purged many of the chief com- 
munists in other East European states. 

In Asia, the Chinese Communists, headed by Mao Zedong and 
assisted by the Soviet Union, achieved victory over the Nation- 
alists in 1949. Several months afterward, in 1950, China and the 



80 



Historical Setting: 1917 to 1982 



Soviet Union concluded a mutual defense treaty against Japan and 
the United States. Hard negotiations over concessions and aid be- 
tween the two communist countries served as an indication that 
China, with its independent party and enormous population, would 
not become a Soviet satellite, although for a time their relations 
appeared particularly close. Elsewhere in Asia, the Soviet Union 
pursued a vigorous policy of support for national liberation move- 
ments, especially in Malaya and Indochina, which were still colo- 
nies of Britain and France, respectively. Thinking that the West 
would not defend the Republic of Korea (South Korea), Stalin al- 
lowed or encouraged the Soviet-equipped forces of the Democratic 
People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) to invade South Korea 
in 1950. But forces from the United States and other members of 
the United Nations came to the aid of South Korea, leading China 
to intervene militarily on behalf of North Korea, probably on Soviet 
instigation. Although the Soviet Union avoided direct participa- 
tion in the conflict (which would end in 1953), the Korean War 
inspired the United States to strengthen its military capability and 
to conclude a peace treaty and security pact with Japan. Chinese 
participation in the war also strengthened China's independent po- 
sition in relation to the Soviet Union. 

Death of Stalin 

In the early 1950s, Stalin, now an old man, apparently permit- 
ted his subordinates in the Politburo (enlarged and called the 
Presidium by the Nineteenth Party Congress in October 1952) 
greater powers of action within their spheres. (Also at the Nineteenth 
Party Congress, the name of the party was changed from the All- 
Union Communist Party [Bolshevik] to the Communist Party of 
the Soviet Union — CPSU.) Indicative of the Soviet leader's wan- 
ing strength, Secretary Georgii M. Malenkov delivered the politi- 
cal report to the Nineteenth Party Congress in place of Stalin (see 
Party Congress, ch. 7). Although the general secretary took a 
smaller part in the day-to-day administration of party affairs, he 
maintained his animosity toward potential enemies. In January 
1953, the party newspaper announced that a group of predomi- 
nantly Jewish doctors had murdered high Soviet officials, includ- 
ing Zhdanov. Western historians speculate that the disclosure of 
this "doctors' plot" may have been a prelude to an intended purge 
directed against Malenkov, Molotov, and secret police chief 
Lavrenty Beria. In any case, when Stalin died on March 5, 1953 
(under circumstances that are still unclear), his inner circle, which 
had feared him for years, secretly rejoiced. 



81 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

During his quarter-century of dictatorial control, Stalin had over- 
seen impressive development in the Soviet Union. From a com- 
paratively backward agricultural society, the country had been 
transformed into a powerful industrial state. But in the course of 
that transformation, millions of people had been killed, and Sta- 
lin's use of repressive controls had become an integral function of 
his regime. How Stalin's system would be maintained or altered 
would be a question of vital concern to Soviet leaders for years after 
him. 

The Khrushchev Era 

Collective Leadership and the Rise of Khrushchev 

Stalin died without naming an heir, and none of his associates 
had the power to immediately claim supreme leadership. The de- 
ceased dictator's colleagues initially tried to rule jointly through 
a collective leadership, with Malenkov holding the top positions 
of prime minister (chairman of the Council of Ministers; the name 
changed from Council of People's Commissars in 1946) and general 
secretary (the latter office for only two weeks). The arrangement 
was first challenged in 1953 when Beria, the powerful head of the 
security forces, plotted a coup. Beria's associates in the Presidium, 
however, ordered Marshal Zhukov to arrest him, and he was secredy 
executed. With Beria's death came the end of the inordinate power 
of the secret police; the party has maintained strict control over 
the state security organs ever since. 

After the elimination of Beria, the succession struggle became more 
subde. Malenkov found a formidable rival in Nikita S. Khrushchev, 
whom the Presidium elected first secretary (Stalin's title of gen- 
eral secretary was abolished) in September. Of peasant background, 
Khrushchev had served as head of the Ukrainian party organi- 
zation during and after World War II and was a member of the 
Soviet political elite during the Stalin period. The rivalry between 
Malenkov and Khrushchev surfaced publicly through Malenkov' s 
support for increased production of consumer goods, while Khrush- 
chev conservatively stood for development of heavy industry. After 
a poor showing by light industry and agriculture, Malenkov 
resigned as prime minister in February 1955. The new prime 
minister, Nikolai A. Bulganin, had little influence or real power; 
Khrushchev was now the most important figure within the collec- 
tive leadership. 

At the Twentieth Party Congress, held in February 1956, Khrush- 
chev further advanced his position within the party by denouncing 
Stalin's crimes in a dramatic "secret speech." Khrushchev revealed 



82 



Statue "Motherland" on Mamayev Hill, Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad), 
Russian Republic. During the Battle of Stalingrad, some of the fiercest fight- 
ing took place here before the German troops surrendered in February 1943. 

Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 



83 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

that Stalin had arbitrarily liquidated thousands of party members 
and military leaders (thereby contributing to the initial Soviet defeats 
in World War II) and had established a pernicious cult of perso- 
nality (see Glossary). With this speech Khrushchev not only dis- 
tanced himself from Stalin and from Stalin's close associates, 
Molotov, Malenkov, and Lazar M. Kaganovich, but also abjured 
the dictator's policies of terror. As a direct result of the "de- 
Stalinization" campaign launched by the speech, the release of po- 
litical prisoners, which had begun in 1953, was stepped up, and 
some of Stalin's victims were posthumously rehabilitated (see Glos- 
sary). Khrushchev later intensified his campaign against Stalin at 
the Twenty-Second Party Congress in 1961, winning approval to 
remove Stalin's body from the Lenin Mausoleum, where it had 
originally been interred. De-Stalinization encouraged many in 
artistic and intellectual circles to speak out against the abuses of 
the former regime. Although Khrushchev's tolerance of critical crea- 
tive works vacillated during his years of leadership, the new cul- 
tural period — known as the "thaw" — represented a clear break with 
the repression of the arts under Stalin. 

After the Twentieth Party Congress, Khrushchev continued to 
expand his influence, although he still faced opposition. Khrush- 
chev's rivals in the Presidium, spurred by reversals in Soviet for- 
eign policy in Eastern Europe in 1956, potentially threatening 
economic reforms, and the de-Stalinization campaign, united to 
vote him out of office in June 1957. Khrushchev, however, demand- 
ed that the question be put to the Central Committee of the CPSU, 
where he enjoyed strong support. The Central Committee over- 
turned the Presidium's decision and expelled Khrushchev's oppo- 
nents (Malenkov, Molotov, and Kaganovich), whom Khrushchev 
labeled the "anti-party group." In a departure from Stalinist proce- 
dure, Khrushchev did not order the imprisonment or execution 
of his defeated rivals but instead placed them in relatively minor 
offices. Khrushchev moved to consolidate his power further in the 
ensuing months. In October he removed Marshal Zhukov (who 
had helped Khrushchev squelch the "anti-party group") from the 
office of defense minister, presumably because he feared Zhukov 's 
influence in the armed forces. Khrushchev became prime minister 
in March 1958 when Bulganin resigned, thus formally confirming 
his predominant position in the state as well as in the party. 

Despite his rank, Khrushchev never exercised the dictatorial 
authority of Stalin, nor did he ever completely control the party 
even at the peak of his power. His attacks on members of the "anti- 
party group" at the Twenty-First Party Congress in 1959 and the 
Twenty-Second Party Congress in 1961 suggest that his opponents 



84 



Room in the Livadia Palace 
where Stalin, Churchill, and 
Roosevelt met for the Yalta 
Conference in February 1945 
Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 




f / 



still retained support within the party. Khrushchev's relative po- 
litical insecurity probably accounted for some of his grandiose 
pronouncements (for example, his 1961 promise that the Soviet 
Union would attain communism by 1980). His desire to under- 
mine opposition and mollify critics explained the nature of many 
of his domestic reforms and the vacillations in his foreign policy 
toward the West. 

Foreign Policy under Khrushchev 

Almost immediately after Stalin died, the collective leadership 
began altering the conduct of Soviet foreign policy to permit bet- 
ter relations with the West and new approaches to the nonaligned 
countries. Malenkov introduced a change in tone by speaking out 
against nuclear war as a threat to civilization. Khrushchev initially 
contradicted this position, saying capitalism alone would be de- 
stroyed in a nuclear war, but he adopted Malenkov' s view after 
securing his preeminent position. In 1955, to ease tensions between 
East and West, Khrushchev recognized permanent neutrality for 
Austria. Meeting President Dwight D. Eisenhower in Geneva, 
Switzerland, later that year, Khrushchev confirmed Soviet commit- 
ment to ' 'peaceful coexistence" with capitalism. Regarding the de- 
veloping nations, Khrushchev tried to win the goodwill of their 
national leaders, instead of following the established Soviet policy 
of shunning the governments while supporting local communist 



85 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

parties. Soviet influence in the international alignments of India 
and Egypt, as well as of other Third World countries, began in 
the middle of the 1950s. Cuba's entry into the socialist camp in 
1961 was a coup for the Soviet Union. 

With the gains of the new diplomacy came reversals as well. By 
conceding the independence of Yugoslavia in 1955 as well as by 
his de-Stalinization campaign, Khrushchev provoked unrest in 
Eastern Europe, where the policies of the Stalin era weighed heavily. 
In Poland, riots brought about a change in communist party leader- 
ship, which the Soviet Union reluctantly recognized in October 
1956. A popular uprising against Soviet control then broke out in 
Hungary, where the local communist leaders, headed by Imre 
Nagy, called for a multiparty political system and withdrawal from 
the Warsaw Pact, the defensive alliance founded by the Soviet 
Union and its East European satellites in 1955 (see Appendix C). 
The Soviet army crushed the revolt early in November 1956, caus- 
ing numerous casualties. Although the Hungarian Revolution hurt 
Soviet standing in world opinion, it demonstrated that the Soviet 
Union would use force if necessary to maintain control over its satel- 
lite states in Eastern Europe. 

Outside the Soviet sphere of control, China grew increasingly 
restive under Chinese Communist Party chairman Mao Zedong. 
Chinese discontent with the new Soviet leadership stemmed from 
low levels of Soviet aid, feeble Soviet support for China in its dis- 
putes with Taiwan and India, and the new Soviet doctrine of peace- 
ful coexistence with the West (which Mao viewed as a betrayal of 
Marxism-Leninism). Against Khrushchev's wishes, China em- 
barked on a nuclear arms program, declaring in 1960 that nuclear 
war could defeat imperialism. The dispute between militant China 
and the more moderate Soviet Union escalated into a schism in 
the world communist movement after 1960. Albania left the Soviet 
camp and became an ally of China, Romania distanced itself from 
the Soviet Union in international affairs, and communist parties 
around the world split over orientation to Moscow or Beijing. The 
monolithic bloc of world communism had shattered. 

Soviet relations with the West, especially the United States, 
seesawed between moments of relative relaxation and periods of 
tension and crisis. For his part, Khrushchev wanted peaceful co- 
existence with the West, not only to avoid nuclear war but also 
to permit the Soviet Union to develop its economy. Khrushchev's 
meetings with President Eisenhower in 1955 and President John F. 
Kennedy in 1961 and his tour of the United States in 1959 demon- 
strated the Soviet leader's desire for fundamentally smooth rela- 
tions between the West and the Soviet Union and its allies. Yet 



86 



Historical Setting: 1917 to 1982 



Khrushchev also needed to demonstrate to Soviet conservatives and 
militant Chinese that the Soviet Union was a firm defender of the 
socialist camp. Thus in 1958 Khrushchev challenged the status of 
Berlin; when the West would not yield to his demands that the 
western sectors be incorporated into East Germany, he approved 
the erection of the Berlin Wall around those sectors in 1961. To 
maintain national prestige, Khrushchev canceled a summit meet- 
ing with Eisenhower in 1960 after Soviet air defense troops shot 
down a United States U-2 reconnaissance aircraft over Soviet ter- 
ritory. Finally, mistrust over military intentions hobbled East- West 
relations during this time. The West feared the Soviet lead in space 
technology and saw in the buildup of the Soviet military an emerg- 
ing "missile gap" in the Soviet Union's favor. By contrast, the 
Soviet Union felt threatened by a rearmed Federal Republic of Ger- 
many (West Germany), by the United States alliance system en- 
circling the Soviet Union, and by the West's superior strategic and 
economic strength. To offset the United States military advantage 
and thereby improve the Soviet negotiating position, Khrushchev 
in 1962 tried to install nuclear missiles in Cuba, but he agreed to 
withdraw them after Kennedy ordered a blockade around the island 
nation. After coming close to war in the Cuban missile crisis, the 
Soviet Union and the United States took steps to reduce the nuclear 
threat. In 1963 the two countries established the "hot line" be- 
tween Washington and Moscow to reduce the likelihood of acciden- 
tal nuclear war. In the same year, the United States, Britain, and 
the Soviet Union signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty, which for- 
bade testing nuclear weapons in the atmosphere. 

Khrushchev's Reforms and Fall 

Throughout his years of leadership, Khrushchev attempted to 
carry out reform in a range of fields. The problems of Soviet agricul- 
ture, a major concern of Khrushchev, had earlier attracted the at- 
tention of the collective leadership, which introduced important 
innovations in this area of the Soviet economy. The state en- 
couraged peasants to grow more on their private plots, increased 
payments for crops grown on the collective farms, and invested 
more heavily in agriculture. In his dramatic virgin land campaign 
(see Glossary) in the mid-1950s, Khrushchev opened to farming 
vast tracts of land in the northern part of the Kazakh Republic 
and neighboring areas of the Russian Republic. These new farm- 
lands turned out to be susceptible to droughts, but in some years 
they produced excellent harvests. Later innovations by Khrush- 
chev, however, proved counterproductive. His plans for growing 
maize and increasing meat and dairy production failed miserably, 



87 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

and his reorganization of collective farms into larger units produced 
confusion in the countryside. 

Khrushchev's reforms in industry and administrative organiza- 
tion created even greater problems. In a politically motivated move 
to weaken the central state bureaucracy, in 1957 Khrushchev did 
away with the industrial ministries in Moscow and replaced them 
with regional economic councils. Although Khrushchev intended 
these economic councils to be more responsive to local needs, the 
decentralization of industry led to disruption and inefficiency. Con- 
nected with this decentralization was Khrushchev's decision in 1962 
to reorganize party organizations along economic, rather than ad- 
ministrative, lines. The resulting bifurcation of the party appara- 
tus into industrial and agricultural sectors at the oblast (see Glossary) 
level and below contributed to the disarray and alienated many 
party officials at all levels. Symptomatic of the country's economic 
difficulties was the abandonment in 1963 of Khrushchev's special 
seven-year economic plan (1959-65) two years short of its com- 
pletion. 

By 1964 Khrushchev's prestige had been injured in a number 
of areas. Industrial growth slowed, while agriculture showed no 
new progress. Abroad, the split with China, the Berlin crisis, and 
the Cuban fiasco hurt the Soviet Union's international stature, and 
Khrushchev's efforts to improve relations with the West antagonized 
many in the military. Lastly, the 1962 party reorganization caused 
turmoil throughout the Soviet political chain of command. In Oc- 
tober 1964, while Khrushchev was vacationing in Crimea, the 
Presidium voted him out of office and refused to permit him to 
take his case to the Central Committee. Khrushchev retired as a 
private citizen after his successors denounced him for his "hare- 
brained schemes, half-baked conclusions, and hasty decisions." Yet 
along with his failed policies, Khrushchev must also be remem- 
bered for his public disavowal of Stalinism and the cult of person- 
ality. 

The Brezhnev Era 

Collective Leadership and the Rise of Brezhnev 

After removing Khrushchev from power, the leaders of the Polit- 
buro (as the Presidium was renamed in 1966 by the Twenty-Third 
Party Congress) and Secretariat again established a collective leader- 
ship. As was the case following Stalin's death, several individuals, 
including Aleksei N. Kosygin, Nikolai V. Podgornyi, and Leonid 
I. Brezhnev, contended for power behind a facade of unity. Kosygin 
accepted the position of prime minister, which he held until his 



88 



Historical Setting: 1917 to 1982 



retirement in 1980. Brezhnev, who took the post of first secretary, 
may have originally been viewed as an interim appointment by 
his fellows. 

Born to a Russian worker's family in 1906, Brezhnev became 
a protege of Khrushchev early in his career and through his in- 
fluence rose to membership in the Presidium. As his own power 
grew, Brezhnev built up a coterie of followers whom he, as first 
secretary (the title reverted to general secretary after April 1966), 
gradually maneuvered into powerful positions. At the same time, 
Brezhnev slowly demoted or isolated possible contenders for his 
office. He succeeded in elevating Podgornyi to the ceremonial po- 
sition of chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the 
highest legislative organization in the government, in December 
1965, thus eliminating him as a rival. But Brezhnev's rise was very 
gradual; only in 1971, when Brezhnev succeeded in appointing four 
close associates to the Politburo, did it become clear that his was 
the most influential voice in the collective leadership. After sev- 
eral more personnel changes, Brezhnev assumed the chairmanship 
of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet in 1977, confirming his 
primacy in both party and state. 

The years after Khrushchev were notable for the stability of cadres 
(see Glossary) in the party and state apparatus. By introducing the 
slogan "Trust in Cadres" in 1965, Brezhnev won the support of 
many bureaucrats wary of the constant reorganizations of the 
Khrushchev era and eager for security in established hierarchies. 
As an example of the new stability, nearly half of the Central Com- 
mittee members in 1981 were holdovers from fifteen years earlier. 
The corollary to this stability was the aging of Soviet leaders; the 
average age of Politburo members rose from fifty-five in 1966 to 
sixty-eight in 1982. The Soviet leadership (or the "gerontocracy," 
as it was referred to in the West) became increasingly conserva- 
tive and ossified. 

Conservative policies characterized the regime's agenda in the 
years after Khrushchev. Upon assuming power, the collective 
leadership not only reversed such policies of Khrushchev's as the 
bifurcation of the party but also halted de-Stalinization, and posi- 
tive references to the dead dictator began to appear. The Soviet 
Constitution of 1977, although differing in certain respects from 
the 1936 Stalin document, retains the general thrust of the latter 
(see The 1977 Constitution, ch. 8). In contrast to the relative 
cultural freedom tolerated during the early Khrushchev years, 
Brezhnev and his colleagues continued the more restrictive line of 
the later Khrushchev era. The leadership was unwilling or unable 
to employ Stalinist means to control Soviet society; instead, it opted 



89 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

to exert repressive tactics against political dissidents even after the 
Soviet Union acceded to the Helsinki Accords (see Glossary) in 
1975. Dissidents persecuted during this time included writers and 
activists in oudawed religious, nationalist, and human rights move- 
ments. In the latter part of the Brezhnev era, the regime tolerated 
popular expressions of anti-Semitism. Under conditions of "de- 
veloped socialism" (the historical stage that the Soviet Union 
attained in 1977 according to the CPSU), the study of Marxism- 
Leninism served as a means to bolster the authority of the regime 
rather than as a tool for revolutionary action. 

Foreign Policy of a Superpower 

A major concern of Khrushchev's successors was to reestablish 
Soviet primacy in the community of communist states by under- 
mining the influence of China. Although the new leaders originally 
approached China without hostility, Mao's condemnation of Soviet 
foreign policy as "revisionist" and his competition for influence in 
the Third World soon led to a worsening of relations between the 
two countries. Sino-Soviet relations reached a low point in 1969 when 
clashes broke out along the disputed Ussuri River in the Far East. 
Later the Chinese, intimidated by Soviet military strength, agreed 
not to patrol the border area claimed by the Soviet Union; but 
strained relations between the two countries continued into the early 
1980s. 

Under the collective leadership, the Soviet Union again used force 
in Eastern Europe, this time in Czechoslovakia. In 1968 reform- 
minded elements of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia rapidly 
began to liberalize their rule, loosen censorship, and strengthen 
Western ties. In response, Soviet and other Warsaw Pact troops en- 
tered Czechoslovakia and installed a new regime. Out of these events 
arose the so-called Brezhnev Doctrine, which warned that the Soviet 
Union would act to maintain its hegemony in Eastern Europe (see 
Soviet-East European Relations, ch. 10). Soviet suppression of the 
reform movement reduced blatant gestures of defiance on the part 
of Romania and served as a threatening example to the Polish 
Solidarity trade union movement in 1980. But it also helped dis- 
illusion communist parties in Western Europe to the extent that by 
1977 most of the leading parties embraced Eurocommunism, which 
freed them to pursue political programs independent of Moscow's 
dictates. 

Soviet influence in the developing world expanded somewhat dur- 
ing this period. New communist or Marxist governments having 
close relations with the Soviet Union rose to power in several coun- 
tries, including Vietnam, Ethiopia, and Nicaragua. In the Middle 



90 



Veterans of the Great Patriotic War (World War II) pose in Moscow. 

Courtesy Irene Steckler 

East, the Soviet Union vied for influence by backing the Arabs in 
their dispute with Israel. After the June 1967 War, the Soviet Union 
rebuilt the defeated Syrian and Egyptian armies, but it suffered 
a setback when Egypt expelled Soviet advisers from the country 
in 1972 and subsequently entered a closer relationship with the 
United States. The Soviet Union retained ties with Syria and sup- 
ported Palestinian claims for their right to an independent state. 
But Soviet prestige among moderate Muslim states suffered in the 
1980s as a result of Soviet military activities in Afghanistan. At- 
tempting to shore up a communist government in that country, 
Brezhnev sent in Soviet armed forces in December 1979, but a large 
part of the Afghan population resisted both the occupiers and the 
Afghan regime. The resulting war in Afghanistan continued to be 
an unresolved problem for the Soviet Union at the time of Brezh- 
nev's death in 1982. 

Soviet relations with the West first improved, then deteriorated 
in the years after Khrushchev. The gradual winding down of the 
United States commitment to the war in Vietnam after 1968 opened 
the way for negotiations between the United States and the Soviet 
Union on the subject of nuclear arms. After the Treaty on the Non- 
proliferation of Nuclear Weapons was signed in July 1968, the two 
countries began the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) in 



91 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

1969. At the Moscow Summit of May 1972, Brezhnev and Presi- 
dent Richard M. Nixon signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty 
and the Interim Agreement on the Limitation of Strategic Offen- 
sive Arms. Both agreements essentially froze the deployment of 
strategic defensive and offensive weapons. A period of detente, or 
relaxation of tensions, between the two superpowers emerged, with 
a further agreement concluded to establish ceilings on the number 
of offensive weapons on both sides in 1974. The crowning achieve- 
ment of the era of detente was the signing in 1975 of the Helsinki 
Accords, which ratified the postwar status quo in Europe and bound 
the signatories to respect basic principles of human rights. But even 
during the period of detente, the Soviet Union increased weapons 
deployments, with the result that in the 1970s it achieved rough 
parity with the United States in strategic nuclear weaponry (see 
Arms Control and Military Objectives, ch. 17). The Soviet Union 
also heightened its condemnation of the NATO alliance in an at- 
tempt to weaken Western unity. Although a second SALT agree- 
ment was signed by Brezhnev and President Jimmy Carter in 
Vienna in 1979, after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan the Carter 
administration withdrew the agreement from consideration by the 
United States Senate, and detente effectively came to an end. In 
reaction to the Soviet involvement in Afghanistan, the United States 
imposed a grain embargo on the Soviet Union and boycotted the 
Summer Olympics in Moscow in 1980. Tensions between the 
United States and the Soviet Union continued up to Brezhnev's 
death. 

The Economy 

Despite Khrushchev's tinkerings with economic planning, the 
economic system remained dependent on central plans drawn up 
with no reference to market mechanisms. Reformers, of whom the 
economist Evsei Liberman was most noteworthy, advocated greater 
freedom for individual enterprises (see Glossary) from outside con- 
trols and sought to turn the enterprises' economic objectives toward 
making a profit. Prime Minister Kosygin championed Liberman 's 
proposals and succeeded in incorporating them into a general eco- 
nomic reform program approved in September 1965. This reform 
included scrapping Khrushchev's regional economic councils in 
favor of resurrecting the central industrial ministries of the Stalin 
era. Opposition from party conservatives and cautious managers, 
however, soon stalled the Liberman reforms, forcing the state to 
abandon them. 

After this short-lived attempt at revamping the economic sys- 
tem, planners reverted to drafting comprehensive centralized plans 



92 



Historical Setting: 1917 to 1982 



of the type first developed under Stalin. In industry, plans stressed 
the heavy and defense-related branches, with the light consumer- 
goods branches slighted (see Economic Policy, ch. 1 1). As a devel- 
oped industrial country, the Soviet Union by the 1970s found it 
increasingly difficult to maintain the high rates of growth in the 
industrial sector that it had sustained in earlier years. Increasingly 
large investment and labor inputs were required for growth, but 
these inputs were becoming more difficult to obtain. Although the 
planned goals of the five-year plans of the 1970s had been scaled 
down from previous plans, the targets remained largely unmet. 
The industrial shortfalls were felt most sharply in the sphere of con- 
sumer goods, where the public steadily demanded improved qual- 
ity and increased quantity. 

Agricultural development continued to lag in the Brezhnev years. 
Despite steadily higher investments in agriculture, growth under 
Brezhnev fell below that attained under Khrushchev. Droughts oc- 
curring irregularly throughout the 1970s forced the Soviet Union 
to import large quantities of grain from the West, including the 
United States. In the countryside, Brezhnev continued the trend 
toward converting collective farms into state farms and raised the 
incomes of all farm workers. Despite the wage raises, peasants still 
devoted much time and effort to their private plots, which provided 
the Soviet Union with an inordinate share of its agricultural goods 
(see Policy and Administration, ch. 13). 

The standard of living in the Soviet Union presented a problem 
to the Brezhnev leadership after improvements made in the late 
1960s gradually leveled off at a position well below that of many 
Western industrial (and some East European) countries. Although 
certain goods and appliances became more accessible during the 
1960s and 1970s, improvements in housing and food supply were 
slight. Shortages of consumer goods abetted pilferage of govern- 
ment property and growth of the black market. Vodka, however, 
remained readily available, and alcoholism was an important fac- 
tor in both the declining life expectancy and the rising infant mor- 
tality that the Soviet Union experienced in the later Brezhnev years. 

Culture and the Arts 

Progress in developing the education system was mixed during 
the Brezhnev years. In the 1960s and 1970s, the percentage of 
working-age people with secondary and higher education steadily 
increased. Yet at the same time, access to higher education grew 
more difficult. By 1980 the percentage of secondary school gradu- 
ates admitted to universities had dropped to only two-thirds of the 
1960 figure. Students accepted into the universities increasingly 



93 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

came from professional families rather than from worker or peasant 
households. This trend toward the perpetuation of the educated 
elite was not only a function of the superior cultural background 
of elite families but was also, in many cases, a result of their power 
to influence the admissions procedures. 

Progress in science also enjoyed varied success under Brezhnev. 
In the most visible test of its ability — the race with the United States 
to put a man on the moon — the Soviet Union failed, but through 
persistence the Soviet space program continued to make headway 
in other areas. In general, despite leads in such fields as metal- 
lurgy and thermonuclear fusion, Soviet science lagged behind that 
of the West, hampered in part by the slow development of com- 
puter technology. 

In literature and the arts, a greater variety of creative works be- 
came accessible to the public than had previously been available. 
True, the state continued to determine what could be legally pub- 
lished or performed, punishing persistent offenders with exile or 
prison. Nonetheless, greater experimentation in art forms became 
permissible in the 1970s, with the result that more sophisticated 
and subdy critical work began to be produced. The regime loosened 
the strictures of socialist realism; thus, for instance, many protagonists 
of the novels of author Iurii Trifonov concerned themselves with 
problems of daily life rather than with building socialism. In music, 
although the state continued to frown on such Western phenomena 
as jazz and rock, it began to permit Western musical ensembles 
specializing in these genres to make limited appearances. But the 
native balladeer Vladimir Vysotskii, widely popular in the Soviet 
Union, was denied official recognition because of his iconoclastic 
lyrics. 

In the religious life of the Soviet Union, a resurgence in popu- 
lar devotion to the major faiths became apparent in the late 1970s 
despite continued de facto disapproval on the part of the authori- 
ties. This revival may have been connected with the generally grow- 
ing interest of Soviet citizens in their respective national traditions 
(see Manifestations of National Assertiveness, ch. 4). 

Death of Brezhnev 

Shortly after his cult of personality began to take root in the 
mid-1970s, Brezhnev began to experience periods of ill health. After 
Brezhnev's first stroke in 1975, Politburo members Mikhail A. 
Suslov and Andrei P. Kirilenko assumed some of Brezhnev's func- 
tions for a time. Then, after another bout of poor health in 1978, 
Brezhnev delegated more of his responsibilities to Konstantin U. 
Chernenko, a long-time associate who soon began to be regarded 



94 



Historical Setting: 1917 to 1982 



as the heir apparent. His prospects of succeeding Brezhnev, 
however, were hurt by problems plaguing the general secretary in 
the early 1980s. Not only had economic failures hurt Brezhnev's 
prestige, but scandals involving his family and political allies also 
damaged his stature. Meanwhile, Iurii V. Andropov, chief of the 
secret police, the Committee for State Security (Komitet gosudarst- 
vennoi bezopasnosti — KGB), apparently also began a campaign 
to discredit Brezhnev. Andropov took over Suslov's functions after 
Suslov died in 1982, and he used his position to advance himself 
as the next CPSU general secretary. Brezhnev himself, despite ill 
health following another stroke in March, would not relinquish his 
office. Soon after reviewing the traditional Bolshevik Revolution 
parade in November 1982, Brezhnev died. 

Ultimately, the Soviet Union paid a high price for the stability 
that prevailed during the years of the Brezhnev regime. By avoid- 
ing necessary political and economic change, the Brezhnev leader- 
ship ensured the economic and political decline that the country 
experienced during the 1980s. This deterioration of power and pres- 
tige stood in sharp contrast to the dynamism that marked the Soviet 
Union's revolutionary beginnings. 

* * * 

A number of comprehensive texts covering the history of the 
Soviet Union have recently appeared. Most worthy of recommen- 
dation to the nonspecialist is A History of Russia and the Soviet Union 
by David MacKenzie and Michael W. Curran. A thoughtful sur- 
vey can be found in Geoffrey A. Hosking's The First Socialist Society. 
Other general works covering the Soviet period include Robert V. 
Daniels's Russia: The Roots of Confrontation, Donald W. Treadgold's 
Twentieth Century Russia, and Adam B. Ulam's A History of Soviet 
Russia. There are also a number of excellent books on the various 
phases of Soviet history. The recognized classic on the revolution- 
ary and Civil War period is William H. Chamberlin's The Russian 
Revolution, 1917-1921. Recommended for the Stalin era is Stalin 
by Adam B. Ulam. For Khrushchev, the reader is referred to 
Carl A. Linden's Khrushchev and the Soviet Leadership, 1957-1964. 
Khrushchev's two- volume memoirs, Krushchev Remembers, are fas- 
cinating reading. Harry Gelman's The Brezhnev Politburo and the 
Decline of Detente treats the Brezhnev period in detail. (For further 
information and complete citations, see Bibliography.) 



95 



Chapter 3. Physical Environment 

and Population 




People of the Soviet Union against a backdrop of the Kremlin 
in Moscow and mountains in the Georgian Republic 



CURVING AROUND THE North Pole and the Arctic Ocean 
like a huge arc, the Soviet Union spans almost half the globe from 
east to west and about 5,000 kilometers from north to south. It 
is the world's largest country, occupying the major portions of 
Europe and Asia and including one- sixth of the earth's inhabited 
land area. Its diverse terrain ranges from vast deserts to towering 
mountains, yielding huge stores of natural resources and enabling 
the country to satisfy almost all of its own essential natural resource 
needs. In terms of population, the Soviet Union ranks third after 
China and India. Its peoples, however, as its terrain, are as diverse 
as those of any continent. 

The Ural Mountains extend more than 2,200 kilometers, form- 
ing the northern and central boundary separating Asia from Europe. 
The continental divide continues another 1,375 kilometers from 
the Ural Mountains through the Caspian Sea and along the 
Caucasus Mountains, splitting the Soviet Union into grossly un- 
equal Asian and European parts. Roughly three-quarters of Soviet 
territory encompass a part of Asia far larger than China and India 
combined. Nevertheless, it is the western quarter, the European 
part, that is home to more than 70 percent of all Soviet citizens. 
Surveys of Soviet geography and population have long pointed out 
the acutely uneven distribution of human and natural resources 
throughout the country. Despite considerable attempts to setde peo- 
ple in Asian areas that are abundant in resources, this imbalance 
persists. Rapid depletion of water and fuel resources in the Euro- 
pean part has continued to outstrip development in resource-rich 
Siberia, which is east of the Ural Mountains. From 1970 to 1989, 
the campaign to settle and exploit the inhospitable frontier region 
of western Siberia with its plentiful fuel and energy supplies was 
costly but successful. 

Although the Soviet Union is richly endowed with resources, 
several factors severely restrict their availability and use. The ex- 
treme climate and the northern position of the country, plus the 
unfavorable location of major deposits, present formidable geo- 
graphic impediments. Massive depopulation, firmly established pat- 
terns of settlement, and disparate birth rates have resulted in 
regional labor shortages and surpluses. 

In the years since the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the inhabi- 
tants of the Soviet Union have suffered terrible hardships. Before 
the 1950s, in each decade the population experienced a cataclysmic 



99 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

demographic event in the form of epidemics, wars, or famines and 
in state-sanctioned mass killings. Only those persons born since 
World War II (62 percent of the population in 1987) have been 
spared the havoc that ravaged their grandparents' and parents' 
generations. The long-term effects of these disasters on the popu- 
lation can hardly be overstated. The opportunity to examine in 
relative tranquillity the national demographic situation is a post- 
war phenomenon. During this time, Soviet officials have become 
increasingly aware of the importance of demographic issues. The 
most visible signs of this are the policies aimed at influencing and 
directing demographic processes such as reproduction and migra- 
tion for the benefit of society and the economy. 

Encouraged by glasnost' (see Glossary), in the 1980s Soviet and 
foreign geographers and demographers engaged in spirited and open 
discussions. Probing articles and books began appearing on previ- 
ously sensitive or taboo topics. Alcohol and drug abuse, high rates 
of infant and adult mortality, environmental degradation, the 
decline of the Soviet family, and the frequency of divorce were 
among them. Population problems stemming from sharp differ- 
ences in the reproduction rates and migration patterns of the numer- 
ous Soviet nationalities were also openly debated. 

Physical Environment 

Any geographic description of the Soviet Union is replete with 
superlatives. Its inventory of land and water contains the world's 
largest and deepest lakes, the most expansive plain, and Europe's 
highest mountain and longest river. Desert scenes from Soviet Cen- 
tral Asia resemble the Australian outback. The Crimean coast on 
the Black Sea is the Soviet Riviera, and the mountains rimming 
the southern boundary are as imposing as the Swiss Alps. However, 
most of the topography and climate resembles that of the north- 
ernmost portion of the North American continent. The northern 
forests and the plains to the south find their closest counterparts 
in the Yukon Territory and in the wide swath of land extending 
across most of Canada. Similarities in terrain, climate, and settle- 
ment patterns between Siberia and Alaska and Canada are un- 
mistakable. 

After the Bolshevik Revolution and the ensuing Civil War 
(1918-21), Soviet regimes transformed, often radically, the coun- 
try's physical environment. In the 1970s and 1980s, Soviet citizens, 
from the highest officials to ordinary factory workers and farmers, 
began to examine negative aspects of this transformation and to 
call for more prudent use of natural resources and greater concern 
for environmental protection. 



100 



Physical Environment and Population 

Global Position and Boundaries 

Located in the middle and northern latitudes of the Northern 
Hemisphere, the Soviet Union on the whole is much closer to the 
North Pole than to the equator. Individual country comparisons are 
of littie value in gauging the enormous size (more than twice that 
of the United States) and diversity of the Soviet Union. A far bet- 
ter perspective comes by viewing the country as a truly continental- 
sized landmass only slightiy smaller than North America and larger 
than South America in both area and population. 

The country's 22.4 million square kilometers include one-sixth 
of the earth's inhabited land area. Its western portion, more than 
half of all Europe, makes up just 25 percent of the Soviet Union; 
this, however, is where the overwhelming majority (about 72 per- 
cent) of the people live and where most industrial and agricultural 
activities are concentrated. It was here, roughly between the Dnepr 
River and the Ural Mountains, that the Russian Empire took shape, 
following Muscovy's gradual expansion that reached the Pacific 
Ocean in the seventeenth century. 

Although its historical, political, economic, and cultural ties bind 
it firmly to Europe, the Soviet Union is largely an Asian country 
because of Siberia. For centuries this land between the Urals and 
the Pacific was infamous as a place of exile, a land of endless ex- 
panses of snow and frigid temperatures. In the post- World War 
II period, however, Siberia has also become known as a new frontier 
because of its treasure of natural resources. 

The Soviet Union measures some 10,000 kilometers from 
Kaliningrad on the Gulf of Danzig in the west to Ratmanova Island 
(Big Diomede Island) in the Bering Strait, or roughly equivalent 
to the distance from Edinburgh, Scotland, east to Nome, Alaska. 
From the tip of the Taymyr Peninsula on the Arctic Ocean to the 
Central Asian town of Kushka near the Afghan border extend 
almost 5,000 kilometers of mostly rugged, inhospitable terrain. The 
east-west expanse of the continental United States would easily fit 
between the northern and southern borders of the Soviet Union 
at their extremities. 

Extending for over 60,000 kilometers, the Soviet border is not 
only one of the world's most closely guarded but also is by far the 
longest. Along the nearly 20,000-kilometer-long land frontier, 
the Soviet Union abuts twelve countries, six on each continent. 
In Asia, its neighbors are the Democratic People's Republic of Korea 
(North Korea), China, Mongolia, Afghanistan, Iran, and Turkey; 
in Europe, it borders Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, 
Finland, and Norway. Except for the icy eighty- six kilometers of 



101 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

the Bering Strait, it would have a thirteenth neighbor — the United 
States (see fig. 1). 

Approximately two-thirds of the frontier is bounded by water, 
forming the longest and, owing to its proximity to the North Pole, 
probably the most useless coastline of any country. Practically all 
of the lengthy northern coast is well above the Arctic Circle and, 
with the important exception of Murmansk, which receives the 
warm currents of the Gulf Stream, is locked in ice much of the 
year. A dozen seas, part of the water systems of three oceans — the 
Arctic, Atlantic, and Pacific — wash Soviet shores. 

Administrative-Political-Territorial Divisions 

Since 1956 the enormous territory of the Soviet Union has con- 
sisted of fifteen union republics — the largest administrative and po- 
litical units — officially known as Soviet republics or union republics 
(see Glossary). Nationality (see Glossary), size of the population, 
and location are the determinants for republic status. By far the 
largest and most important of the union republics is the Russian 
Republic, containing about 51 percent of the population (see table 
6, Appendix A). Largely because it encompasses Siberia, the Rus- 
sian Republic alone accounts for 75 percent of Soviet territory and 
forms the heartland of both the European and the Asian portions 
of the Soviet Union. Although in 1989 Russians made up over 51 
percent of the Soviet population and were in many ways the 
dominant nationality, they are just one of more than 100 nation- 
ality groups that make up Soviet society. Fourteen other major na- 
tionalities also have their own republics: in the European part are 
the Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian, Belorussian, Ukrainian, and 
Moldavian republics; the Georgian, Azerbaydzhan, and Armenian 
republics occupy the Caucasus; and Soviet Central Asia is home 
to the Kazakh, Uzbek, Turkmen, Kirgiz, and Tadzhik republics 
(see Nationalities of the Soviet Union, ch. 4; table 13, Appendix 
A). The Soviet system also provides for territorial and adminis- 
trative subdivisions called autonomous republics, autonomous ob- 
lasts, autonomous okruga, kraia, or most often oblasts (see Glossary). 
These subdivisions make the country easier to manage and at times 
serve to recognize additional nationalities. In terms of political and 
administrative authority, the more than 130 oblasts and autono- 
mous oblasts resemble to a limited degree counties in the United 
States. Many oblasts, however, are about the size of states. For 
example, Tyumenskaya Oblast, the storehouse of Soviet fuels, is 
only slighdy smaller than Alaska (see Fuels, ch. 12). A more ap- 
propriate comparison with counties, in terms of numbers and area, 



102 



Panoramic view from the Trans-Siberian Railway 
Dnepr River in Kiev, Ukrainian Republic 
Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 



103 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

can be made with the more than 3,200 raiony (see Glossary), the 
Soviet Union's smallest administrative and political subdivision. 

Topography and Drainage 

Most geographers divide the vast Soviet territory into five natural 
zones that generally extend from west to east: the tundra zone; the 
taiga or forest zone; the steppe or plains zone; the arid zone; and 
the mountain zone. Most of the Soviet Union consists of three plains 
(East European Plain, West Siberian Plain, and Turan Lowland), 
two plateaus (Central Siberian Plateau and Kazakh Upland), and 
a series of mountainous areas, concentrated for the most part in 
the extreme northeast or extending intermittentiy along the southern 
border. The West Siberian Plain, the world's largest, extends east 
from the Urals to the Yenisey River (see fig. 6). Because the ter- 
rain and vegetation are uniform in each of the natural zones, the 
Soviet Union, as a whole, presents an illusion of uniformity. Never- 
theless, the Soviet territory contains all the major vegetation zones 
with the exception of tropical rain forest. Almost 10 percent of Soviet 
territory is tundra, that is, a treeless marshy plain. The tundra is 
the Soviet Union's northernmost zone of snow and ice, stretching 
from the Finnish border in the west to the Bering Strait in the east 
and then running south along the Pacific coast to the earthquake 
and volcanic region of northern Kamchatka Peninsula. It is the 
land made famous by herds of wild reindeer, by "white nights" 
(dusk at midnight, dawn shortly thereafter) in summer, and by 
days of total darkness in winter. The long harsh winters and lack 
of sunshine allow only mosses, lichens, and dwarf willows and 
shrubs to sprout low above the barren permafrost (see Glossary). 
Although the great Siberian rivers slowly traverse this zone in reach- 
ing the Arctic Ocean, drainage of the numerous lakes, ponds, and 
swamps is hampered by partial and intermittent thawing. Frost 
weathering is the most important physical process here, shaping 
a landscape modified by extensive glaciation in the last Ice Age. 
Less than 1 percent of the Soviet population lives in this zone. The 
fishing and port industries of the Kola Peninsula and the huge oil 
and gas fields of northwestern Siberia are the largest employers 
in the tundra. The frontier city of Noril'sk, for example, with a 
population of 181 ,000 in 1987, is one of the largest setdements above 
the Arctic Circle. 

The northern forests of spruce, fir, cedar, and larch, collectively 
known as the taiga, make up the largest natural zone of the Soviet 
Union, an area about the size of the United States. Here too the 
winter is long and severe, as witnessed by the routine register- 
ing of the world's coldest temperatures for inhabited areas in the 



104 



V 




Figure 6. Topography and Drainage 
106 



Physical Environment and Population 

northeastern portion of this belt. The taiga zone extends in a broad 
band across the middle latitudes, stretching from the Finnish border 
in the west to the Verkhoyansk Range in northeastern Siberia and 
as far south as the southern shores of Lake Baykal. Isolated sec- 
tions of taiga are found along mountain ranges, as in the southern 
part of the Urals, and in the Amur River Valley in the Far East. 
About 33 percent of the population lives in this zone, which, with 
the mixed forest zone, includes most of the European part of the 
Soviet Union and the ancestral lands of the earliest Slavic settlers. 

Long associated with traditional images of Russian landscape 
and cossacks (see Glossary) on horseback are the steppes, which 
are treeless, grassy plains. Although they cover only 15 percent of 
Soviet territory, the steppes are home to roughly 44 percent of the 
population. They extend for 4,000 kilometers from the Carpathian 
Mountains in the western Ukrainian Republic across most of the 
northern portion of the Kazakh Republic in Soviet Central Asia, 
between the taiga and arid zones, occupying a relatively narrow 
band of plains whose chernozem (see Glossary) soils are some of 
the most fertile on earth. In a country of extremes, the steppe zone, 
with its moderate temperatures and normally adequate levels of 
sunshine and moisture, provides the most favorable conditions for 
human settlement and agriculture. Even here, however, agricul- 
tural yields are sometimes adversely affected by unpredictably low 
levels of precipitation and occasional catastrophic droughts (see 
Production, ch. 13). 

Below the steppes, and merging at times with them, is the arid 
zone: the semideserts and deserts of Soviet Central Asia and, par- 
ticularly, of the Kazakh Republic. Portions of this zone have be- 
come cotton- and rice-producing regions through intensive 
irrigation. For various reasons, including sparse settiement and a 
comparatively mild climate, the arid zone has become the most 
prominent center for Soviet space exploration. 

One-quarter of the Soviet Union consists of mountains or moun- 
tainous terrain. With the significant exceptions of the Ural Moun- 
tains and the mountains of eastern Siberia, the mountains occupy 
the southern periphery of the Soviet Union. The Urals, because 
they have traditionally been considered the natural boundary be- 
tween Europe and Asia and because they are valuable sources of 
minerals, are the most famous of the country's nine major ranges. 
In terms of elevation (comparable to the Appalachians) and vege- 
tation, however, they are far from impressive, and they do not serve 
as a formidable natural barrier. 

Truly alpine terrain is found in the southern mountain ranges. 
Between the Black and Caspian seas, for example, the Caucasus 



107 




Figure (i. Topography and Dunnage 



106 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Mountains rise to impressive heights, marking a continuation of the 
boundary separating Europe from Asia. One of the peaks, Mount 
El'brus, is the highest point in Europe at 5,642 meters. This range, 
extending to the northwest as the Crimean and Carpathian moun- 
tains and to the southeast as the Tien Shan and Pamirs, forms an 
imposing natural barrier between the Soviet Union and its neigh- 
bors to the south. The highest point in the Soviet Union, at 7,495 
meters, is Mount Communism (Pik Kommunizma) in the Pamirs 
near the border with Afghanistan, Pakistan, and China. The Pamirs 
and the Tien Shan are offshoots of the tallest mountain chain in 
the world, the Himalayas. Eastern Siberia and the Soviet Far East 
are also mountainous regions, especially the volcanic peaks of 
the long Kamchatka Peninsula, which juts down into the Sea of 
Okhotsk. The Soviet Far East, the southern portion of Soviet Cen- 
tral Asia, and the Caucasus are the Soviet Union's centers of seis- 
mic activity. In 1887, for example, a severe earthquake destroyed 
the city of Vernyy (present-day Alma-Ata), and in December 1988 
a massive quake demolished the Armenian city of Spitak and large 
sections of Kirovakan and Leninakan. The 1988 quake, one of the 
worst in Soviet history, claimed more than 25,000 lives. 

The Soviet Union's water resources are both scarce and abun- 
dant. With about 3 million rivers and approximately 4 million in- 
land bodies of water, the Soviet Union holds the largest fresh, 
surface-water resources of any country. Unfortunately, most of these 
resources (84 percent), as with so much of the Soviet resource base, 
are at a great distance from consumers; they flow through sparsely 
populated territory and into the Arctic and Pacific oceans. In con- 
trast, areas with the highest concentrations of population, and there- 
fore the highest demand for water supplies, tend to have the warmest 
climates and highest rates of evaporation. The result is barely ade- 
quate (or in some cases inadequate) water resources where they 
are needed most. 

Nonetheless, as in many other countries, the earliest settlements 
sprang up on the rivers, and that is where the majority of the urban 
population prefers to live. The Volga, Europe's longest river, is by 
far the Soviet Union's most important commercial waterway. Three 
of the country's twenty- three cities with more than 1 million inhabi- 
tants are located on its banks: Gor'kiy, Kazan', and Kuybyshev. 

The European part of the Soviet Union has extensive, highly 
developed, and heavily used water resources, among them the key 
hydrosystems of the Volga, Kama, Dnepr, Dnestr, and Don rivers. 
As is the case with fuels, however, the greatest water resources are 
found east of the Urals, deep in Siberia. Of the sixty-three rivers 
in the Soviet Union longer than 1,000 kilometers, forty are east 
of the Urals, including the four mighty rivers that drain Siberia 



108 



Siberian village in winter 
Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 



as they flow northward to the Arctic Ocean: the Irtysh, Ob', 
Yenisey, and Lena rivers. The Amur River forms part of the wind- 
ing and sometimes tense boundary between the Soviet Union and 
China. Taming and exploiting the hydroelectric potential of these 
systems has been a monumental and highly publicized national 
project. Some of the world's largest hydroelectric stations operate 
on these rivers. Hundreds of smaller hydroelectric power plants 
and associated reservoirs have also been constructed on the rivers. 
Thousands of kilometers of canals link river and lake systems and 
provide essential sources of irrigation for farmland. 

The Soviet Union's 4 million inland bodies of water are chiefly 
a legacy of extensive glaciation. Most prominent among them are 
the Caspian Sea, the world's largest inland sea, and Lake Baykal, 
the world's deepest and most capacious freshwater lake. Lake Baykal 
alone holds 85 percent of the freshwater resources of the lakes in 
the Soviet Union and 20 percent of the world's total. Other water 
resources include swampland, a sizable portion of territory (10 per- 
cent), and glaciers in the northern areas. 

Climate 

Notorious cold and long winters have, understandably, been the 
focus of discussions on the Soviet Union's weather and climate. 



109 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

From the frozen depths of Siberia have come baby mammoths per- 
fectly preserved, locked in ice for several thousand years. Millions 
of square kilometers experience half a year of subfreezing temper- 
atures and snow cover over subsoil that is permanently frozen in 
places to depths of several hundred meters. In northeastern Siberia, 
not far from Yakutsk, hardy settlers cope with January tempera- 
tures that consistently average - 50°C. Transportation routes, in- 
cluding entire railroad lines, have been redirected in winter to 
traverse rock- solid waterways and lakes. 

Howling Arctic winds that produce coastal wind chills as low 
as - 152°C and the burany, or blinding snowstorms of the steppe, 
are climatic manifestations of a relatively unfavorable position in 
the Northern Hemisphere. The dominance of winter in the Soviet 
Union is a result of the proximity to the North Pole — the southern- 
most point of the country is about on the same latitude as Oklahoma 
City, Oklahoma — and remoteness from oceans that tend to moder- 
ate the climate. As a result, cold, high-pressure systems in the 
east — the "Siberian high" — and wet, cold cyclonic systems in the 
west largely determine the overall weather patterns. 

The prolonged period of cold weather has a profound impact 
on almost every aspect of life in the Soviet Union. It affects where 
and how long people live and work and what kinds of crops are 
grown and where they are grown (no part of the country has a year- 
round growing season). The length and severity of winterlike 
weather, along with the sharp fluctuations in the mean summer 
and winter temperatures, impose special requirements on many 
branches of the economy: in regions of permafrost, buildings must 
be constructed on pilings, and machinery must be made of spe- 
cially tempered steel; transportation systems must be engineered 
to perform reliably in extremely low and high temperatures; the 
health care field and the textile industry are greatly affected by the 
ramifications of six to eight months of wintry weather; and energy 
demands are multiplied by extended periods of darkness and cold. 

Despite its well-deserved reputation as a generally snowy, icy 
northern country, the Soviet Union includes other major climatic 
zones as well. According to Soviet geographers, most of their coun- 
try is located in the temperate zone, which for them includes all 
of the European portion except the southern part of Crimea and 
the Caucasus, all of Siberia, the Soviet Far East, and the plains 
of Soviet Central Asia and the southern Kazakh Republic. Within 
this belt are the taiga, the steppes, and the deserts of Soviet Cen- 
tral Asia. In fact, the climate in much of this zone is anything but 
temperate; it varies from the moderate maritime climate of the Baltic 
republics, which is similar to the American Northwest, to the 



110 



Apartment house in Spitak, Armenian Republic, destroyed by an 
earthquake in December 1988 that registered 6.9 on the Richter scale. 
Such apartment houses were not designed, or built, to withstand seismic 
activity of that magnitude. The earthquake claimed 25, 000 victims. 

Courtesy United States Geological Survey 



111 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

continental climate of the east and northeast, which is akin to that 
of the Yukon Territory. Leningrad and Yakutsk, although roughly 
on the same latitude, have average January temperatures of - 7°C 
and -50°C, respectively. 

Two areas outside the temperate zone demonstrate the climatic 
diversity of the Soviet Union: the Soviet Far East, under the in- 
fluence of the Pacific Ocean, with a monsoonal climate; and the 
subtropical band of territory extending along the southern coast 
of the Soviet Union's most popular resort area, Crimea, through 
the Caucasus and into Soviet Central Asia, where there are deserts 
and oases. 

With most of the land so far removed from the oceans and the 
moisture they provide, levels of precipitation in the Soviet Union 
are low to moderate. More than half the country receives fewer 
than forty centimeters of rainfall each year, and most of Soviet Cen- 
tral Asia and northeastern Siberia can count on barely one-half 
that amount. The wettest parts are found in the small, lush sub- 
tropical region of the Caucasus and in the Soviet Far East along 
the Pacific coast. 

Natural Resources 

The Soviet Union is richly endowed with almost every major 
category of natural resource. Drawing upon its vast holdings, it 
has become the world leader in the production of oil, iron ore, man- 
ganese, and asbestos. It has the world's largest proven reserves of 
natural gas, and in 1984 it surpassed the United States in the 
production of this increasingly important fuel. It has enormous coal 
reserves and is in second place in coal production (see fig. 7). 

Self-sufficiency has traditionally been a powerful stimulus for 
exploring and developing the country's huge, yet widely dispersed, 
resource base. It remains a source of national pride that the Soviet 
Union, alone among the industrialized countries of the world, can 
claim the ability to satisfy almost all the requirements of its econ- 
omy using its own natural resources. 

The abundance of fossil fuels supplies not only the Soviet Union's 
domestic needs; for many years, an ample surplus has been ex- 
ported to consumers in Eastern Europe and Western Europe, where 
it earns most of the Soviet Union's convertible currency (see Raw 
Materials; Fuels, ch. 12). 

However, as resource stocks have been depleted in the heavily 
populated European section, tapping the less accessible but vital 
riches east of the Urals has become a national priority. The best 
example of this process is fuels and energy. The depletion of readi- 
ly accessible fuel resources west of the Urals has caused development 



112 



Physical Environment and Population 

and exploitation to shift to the inhospitable terrain of western 
Siberia, which in the 1970s and 1980s displaced the Volga-Ural 
and the southern European regions as the country's primary sup- 
plier of fuel and energy (see table 7, Appendix A). Fierce cold, 
permafrost, and persistent flooding have made this exploitation 
costly and difficult. 

Environmental Concerns 

In spite of a series of environmental laws and regulations passed 
in the 1970s, authentic environmental protection in the Soviet 
Union did not become a major concern until General Secretary 
Mikhail S. Gorbachev came to power in March 1985. Without an 
established regulatory agency and an environmental protection in- 
frastructure, enforcement of existing laws was largely ignored. Only 
occasional and isolated references appeared on such issues as air 
and water pollution, soil erosion, and wasteful use of natural 
resources in the 1970s. This lack of concern was prompted by several 
factors. First, after collectivization in the 1930s, all of the land be- 
came state owned and managed. Thus, whenever air and water 
were polluted, the state was most often the agent of this pollution. 
Second, and this was true especially under Joseph V. Stalin's leader- 
ship, the resource base of the country was viewed as limitless and 
free. Third, in the rush to modernize and to develop heavy indus- 
try, concern for damage to the environment and related damage 
to the health of Soviet citizens would have been viewed as detrimen- 
tal to progress. Fourth, pollution control and environmental pro- 
tection itself is an expensive, high- technology industry, and even 
in the mid-1980s many of the Soviet Union's systems to control 
harmful emissions were inoperable or of foreign manufacture. 

Under Gorbachev's leadership, the official attitude toward the 
environment changed. Various social and economic factors helped 
produce this change. To maintain economic growth through the 
1980s, a period in which the labor force had been declining sig- 
nificantly, intensive and more prudent use of both natural and 
human resources was required. At the same time, glasnost' provided 
an outlet for widespread discussion of environmental issues, and 
a genuine grass-roots ecological movement arose to champion causes 
similar to the ecological concerns of the West. Public campaigns 
were mounted to protect Lake Baykal from industrial pollution and 
to halt the precipitous decline in the water levels of the Caspian 
Sea, the Sea of Azov, and, most urgently, the Aral Sea. A grandi- 
ose scheme to divert the northern rivers southward had been 
counted on to replenish these seas, but for both economic and en- 
vironmental reasons, the project was canceled in 1986. 



113 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 




Physical Environment and Population 

Without this diversion project, the Aral Sea, once a body of water 
larger than any of the Great Lakes except Lake Superior, seemed 
destined to become the world's largest salt flat as early as the year 
2010. By 1987 so much water had been siphoned off for irrigation 
of cotton and rice fields south and east of the sea that all shipping 
and commercial fishing had ceased. Former seaports, active as late 
as 1973, were reported to be forty to sixty kilometers from the 
water's edge. Belatedly recognizing the gravity of the situation for 
the 3 million inhabitants of the Aral region, government officials 
declared it an ecological disaster area. 

With respect to air pollution, mass demonstrations protesting 
unhealthful conditions were held in cities such as Yerevan in the 
Armenian Republic. Official reports confirmed that more than 100 
of the largest Soviet cities registered air quality indexes ten times 
worse than permissible levels. In one of the most publicized cases, 
the inhabitants of Kirishi, a city not far from Leningrad, succeeded 
in closing a chemical plant whose toxic emissions were found to 
be harming — and in some cases killing — the city's residents. Fi- 
nally, separate, highly publicized cases of man-made disasters, the 
most prominent of which was the Chernobyl' (see Glossary) nuclear 
power plant accident in 1986, highlighted the fragility of the man- 
production-nature relationship in the Soviet Union and forced a 
reconsideration of traditional attitudes and policies toward indus- 
trialization and development. 

As part of the process of restructuring (perestroika — see Glossary), 
in the 1 980s concrete steps were taken to strengthen environmental 
protection and to provide the country with an effective mechanism 
for implementing policy and ensuring compliance. Two specific 
indications of this were the inclusion of a new section devoted to 
environmental protection in the annual statistical yearbook and the 
establishment of the State Committee for the Protection of Nature 
(Gosudarstvennyi komitet po okhrane prirody — Goskompriroda) 
early in 1988. 

Despite these measures, decades of environmental degradation 
caused by severe water and air pollution and land abuse were un- 
likely to be remedied soon or easily. Solving these critical problems 
will require not only a major redirection of capital and labor but 
also a fundamental change in the entire Soviet approach to indus- 
trial and agricultural production and resource exploitation and con- 
sumption. 

Population 

Seven official censuses have been taken in the Soviet Union (1920, 
1926, 1939, 1959, 1970, 1979, and 1989). Both the quality and the 



115 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

quantity of the data have varied: in 1972 seven volumes totaling 
3,238 pages were published on the 1970 census. In contrast, the 
results of the 1979 census were published more than five years later 
in a single volume of 366 pages. 

According to the census of 1989, on the day of the census, January 
12, the population of the Soviet Union was estimated to be 
286,717,000. This figure maintained the country's long-standing 
position as the world's third most populous country after China 
and India. In the intercensal period (1979-88), the population of 
the Soviet Union grew from 262.4 million to 286.7 million, a 9 
percent increase. 

During the 1970s and early 1980s, the Soviet Union experienced 
declining birth rates, increasing divorce rates, a trend toward 
smaller nuclear families, and increasing mobility and urbanization. 
Major problems associated with such factors as migration, tension 
among nationality groups, uneven fertility rates, and high infant 
and adult mortality became increasingly acute, and various social 
programs and incentives were introduced to deal with them. 

Vital Statistics 

In the period after World War II, annual population growth rates 
gradually declined from a high of 1.4 percent during the 1961-65 
period to 0.9 percent, the rate throughout the 1970s and most of 
the 1980s. Such a rate of increase is typical for an industrialized 
urbanized society, and it closely matched the 1.0 percent growth 
rate recorded in the United States for the same period. 

Between 1971 and 1986, average life expectancy fluctuated and 
actually decreased in some years before stabilizing at about seventy 
years (see table 8, Appendix A). The difference of eight to ten years 
between male and female life expectancy in favor of women was 
somewhat greater than in most Western countries. Life expectancy 
was longest (73.3 years in 1985-86) in the Armenian Republic and 
shortest (64.8 years) in the Turkmen Republic. 

More than any other demographic index, infant mortality under- 
scored most sharply the tremendous regional differences in the popu- 
lation and its health care. Beginning in the mid-1970s, reporting 
of infant mortality rates was discontinued; in October 1986, 
however, Soviet sources revealed that infant mortality rates had 
actually increased between 1970 and 1986, from 24.7 per 1,000 
to 25.4 per 1 ,000 births. While the rate for the Russian Republic, 
which is generally better supplied with health facilities, declined 
by 19 percent, the rate increased for most Soviet Central Asian 
republics. In one case, the Uzbek Republic, the rate increased by 
almost 50 percent, to 46.2 per 1 ,000. In 1986 infant mortality was 



116 




ARAL'SK 



V* 



iUYNAK N 




Satellite imagery of the Aral Sea in 1987. A catastrophic loss of 60 percent 
of the sea's volume of water followed the near total diversion of inflow for 
agricultural irrigation south and east of the sea (see shaded areas). 
The dotted line shows the 1973 shoreline. The formerly active ports of 
Aral'sk and Muynak were stranded in a desert forty to 
sixty kilometers from the water in 1987. 
Courtesy United States Air Force Defense Meterological 
Satellite Program and CIRES/National Snow and Ice Data Center 



117 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

lowest (11.6 per 1,000) in the Lithuanian Republic and highest 
(58.2 per 1,000) in the Turkmen Republic. 

Analysts proposed a number of reasons to explain what was 
viewed as an abnormally high rate of infant mortality for a devel- 
oped country. Among the reasons given were excessive consump- 
tion of alcohol and heavy smoking among women; widespread use 
of abortion as a means of birth control, a procedure that could im- 
pair the health of the mother and of children carried to term; teenage 
pregnancy; unsanitary conditions; and a deteriorating health care 
system (see Health Care, ch. 6). 

In the Soviet Union, virtually all national growth has been the 
result of natural increase because of traditionally rigid control over 
immigration and emigration. Growth, however, varies consider- 
ably from region to region and from nationality to nationality. In 
terms of population, there is a clear trend toward the Soviet Union's 
becoming more Asian and less European. Birth rates in parts of 
Soviet Central Asia are in some cases ten times higher than birth 
rates among Slavs. In the intercensal period 1970-78, population 
growth in the Asian part of the Soviet Union was almost triple the 
rate of growth in the European section, 16.8 percent versus 5.9 
percent. 

Although most facets of the population were dynamic, some 
demographic aspects remained constant: women have outnumbered 
men since the Bolshevik Revolution, and the overwhelming majority 
of the people have opted to live in the cities and on the collective 
farms (see Glossary) and state farms (see Glossary) of the European 
part of the country. In more than seven decades of Soviet power, 
the population has experienced periodic cataclysmic demographic 
events, some of them self-inflicted and some of them of external 
origin. These wars, famines, purges, and epidemics have left an 
enduring imprint on the society and on its ability to reproduce and 
renew itself. The magnitude of human loss in the Soviet Union 
can be shown by estimating the 1987 population as if it had grown 
at a relatively modest annual rate of 1 percent from 1917 to 1987. 
At that rate, the population would have reached approximately 325 
million citizens by the seventieth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revo- 
lution. Instead, that figure is expected to be reached only in 2016, 
a delay of more than one generation. The difference between this 
estimate of 325 million and the actual population in 1987 of 281 
million suggests that some 45 to 50 million lives were lost in wars, 
famines, forced collectivization, and purges. 

The single most devastating event by far was World War II, com- 
monly referred to in the Soviet Union as the Great Patriotic War 
(see The Great Patriotic War, ch. 2). Estimates vary, but an 



118 



Physical Environment and Population 

absolute population decline of some 20 to 25 million seems quite 
plausible. There were 194 million people reportedly living in the 
Soviet Union in 1940. Only 209 million were counted by the cen- 
sus of 1959 instead of the roughly 234 million that might have been 
expected, given a moderate rate of growth. Since the end of the 
war, the population has increased by more than 100 million. 

Age and Sex Structure 

The aspect of the population most affected by the cataclysmic 
demographic events was its age and sex structure. The consequences 
of World War II ensured that the existing surplus of women would 
persist for at least another generation; more than four decades after 
its conclusion, women, most of whom were born before the war, 
still outnumbered men by about 16 million (see table 9, Appendix 
A). This imbalance has had a profound impact on the economy, 
social structure, and population reproduction in the Soviet Union. 
Before the war, just under 40 percent of women were in the work 
force: since 1970 they have been a slight majority of all workers. 
The female component of the work force since the start of the war 
has become an indispensable feature of the Soviet economy, and 
the overwhelming majority of working-age women were employed 
in 1987. 

Because a significant portion of an entire generation perished 
in the war, marriages and births were fewer for some time there- 
after. The decline in the marriage and birth rates produced a popu- 
lation pyramid with bulges and contractions in specific age and 
sex groups and with significantly higher percentages of older women 
at the top of the pyramid (see fig. 8). Expressed another way, in 
1987 for every one dedushka (grandfather), there were almost three 
babushki (grandmothers). 

Because both the economic and the military might of a country 
largely depend upon its labor force, the able-bodied population (de- 
fined in the Soviet Union as males sixteen to fifty-nine years of 
age and females sixteen to fifty-four years of age) was for Soviet 
planners an increasing cause of concern. Additions to the working- 
age population peaked in the 1970s, with a growth of almost 23 
million; projected increases in the 1980s were expected to be one- 
quarter that number, with a gradual improvement to one-half (11.6 
million) in the 1990s. This slowed growth placed a strain on the 
economy in the late 1970s and early 1980s by requiring continu- 
ous boosts in productivity (see Labor, ch. 11). 

In 1985 the sexes were in rough balance, with a slight male 
preponderance up to the population median age of 33.4 years. Be- 
yond the median age, however, women outnumbered men in the 



119 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



AGE-GROUP 

































70 and over 










| ' 


















i 


65-69 




! 


l/IALE 


3 








FEMALI 


=S 




60-64 








1 


I 






,1 






55-59 
50-54 










i i i i ' 






45-49 
40-44 






















35-39 




r " 


m 












1 




30-34 
25-29 


If 




, , , , , i 


1 


20-24 




L -t— \ \ ' , ~" - 






15-19 




\\ r 4 hh r m i »i 






10-14 




! ; ' - 






5-9 






. , . , 1 




0-4 


i 


, i r t \ 




1 



14 12 10 8 6 4 2 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 
POPULATION IN MILLIONS 



Source: Based on information from "Naselenie SSSR," Vestnik statistiki [Moscow], No. 12, 
December 1987, 44. 

Figure 8. Population Distribution by Age and Sex, 1987 

population and in the work force. In some professions and eco- 
nomic sectors (health care, trade, food services, social services, and 
physical education, for example), more than 80 percent of all work- 
ers were women. 

Mortality and Fertility 

Between 1970 and 1986, the mortality rate in the Soviet Union 
increased from 8.2 per 1,000 to 9.8 per 1,000. Some of this in- 
crease was attributable to the aging of the population, as the num- 
ber of old-age (fifty-five for women, sixty for men) pensioners grew 
from 36.5 million to 47.4 million. Other factors, however, con- 
tributed to this upswing, one of the most disturbing of which was 
an increase in the mortality of infants and able-bodied men. The 
male mortality increase was highlighted by the almost ten-year 
differential in male and female life expectancies. Intense urbani- 
zation and the attendant pressures of living and working in an ur- 
ban environment undoubtedly exacerbated the mortality rate. As 
in most developed countries, the leading causes of death in the Soviet 
Union were cardiovascular diseases, malignant tumors, and inju- 
ries and accidents. Suicide cases in 1987 were officially recorded 
at 54,105, or 19.1 per 100,000 population. 



120 



Physical Environment and Population 

Under Gorbachev a concerted effort has been made to reduce 
mortality and improve productivity. The government initiated ac- 
tive campaigns to limit the number of deaths from accidents and 
chronic degenerative diseases by drastically curtailing the availa- 
bility of alcohol and by attempting to persuade the more than 70 
million (in 1986 about 25 percent of the population) smokers to 
renounce the habit. The overall health of the population, the state 
of Soviet health care, and the environment became recurrent topics 
of open discussion and debate. By 1986 these measures seemed to 
be having some effect: one year was added to average male life 
expectancy, and mortality started to decline. Some Soviet demo- 
graphers stressed, however, that long-term improvements would 
only be ensured by focusing on four factors that they believed to 
be major determinants of the level of mortality: the quality of life, 
including working and living conditions, nutrition, and clothing; 
the quality of the environment; the quality and accessibility of health 
care; and the people's sanitary and hygienic habits. 

In the 1970-78 intercensal period, overall fertility rates in the 
Soviet Union declined slightly. Regionally, however, there were 
sharp differences. In Soviet Central Asia, for example, women con- 
sistently expected to have at least twice as many children as their 
counterparts in the European part of the Russian Republic. The 
Caucasus region registered rates between these two extremes. The 
government addressed the issue of declining fertility by enacting 
a series of measures in the late 1970s and early 1980s aimed at mak- 
ing it easier for women to cope with the onerous burden of being 
mother, wife, and worker (see Population Problems and Policies, 
this ch.; Role of Women, ch. 5). 

Urbanization 

In a span of over seventy years, the Soviet Union has under- 
gone a transition from a largely rural agricultural society to an urban 
industrial society. In 1917 only about 17 percent of the population 
lived in cities or urban settlements; in 1961 the urban and rural 
population was in balance; and by 1987 two of every three Soviet 
citizens were urban dwellers (see table 10, Appendix A). 

The levels of urbanization in 1989 highlighted the uneven de- 
velopment of the regions and nationalities. The populations of the 
Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, and Russian republics were 70 per- 
cent urbanized, approximating levels found in Western Europe and 
the United States. Four of the five Central Asian republics (the 
Kirgiz, Tadzhik, Uzbek, and Turkmen republics), however, con- 
tinued to have a majority of the population living in rural areas, 
and the Tadzhik Republic's 33 percent rate of urbanization was 



121 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

only slightly higher than that of Albania. In the European part, 
the Moldavian Republic with a rural majority was an exception 
to the rule of higher rates of urbanization. 

Until the early 1980s, the growth of large cities and the concen- 
tration of industry there went mosdy unchecked. However, because 
of such problems as a chronic housing shortage, pollution, and a 
declining birth rate, authorities attempted to exercise greater con- 
trol over migration to the major cities; among other things, the 
government encouraged greater development and growth in small 
and medium-sized cities. Nevertheless, the scope and tempo of big- 
city growth has continued. In 1970 ten cities had a population of 
1 million or more, but in 1989 the number had risen to twenty- 
three (see table 11, Appendix A). Most of these cities, including 
the three largest — Moscow, Leningrad, and Kiev — were located 
west of the Urals. Only five of the largest cities were east of the 
Urals, and the largest city in the entire eastern half of the Soviet 
Union (beyond the Yenisey River) was Vladivostok (615,000 in- 
habitants in 1987). 

Despite its size and the length of its coastline, the Soviet Union's 
global position and climate have restricted the number of seaports 
to fewer than a dozen key cities (Leningrad, Odessa, Murmansk, 
and Vladivostok, among them). Many of the largest cities, however, 
are located on water, primarily on rivers, that have long been power- 
ful settlement-forming influences and key transportation arteries. 
The Volga and its tributaries remain the key geographic features 
toward which people and commerce continue to gravitate. Two of 
the youngest and fastest growing cities, Tol'yatti and Naberezhnyye 
Chelny, were boom towns that sprang up in the 1970s around giant 
automobile and truck plants on the Volga and Kama rivers, respec- 
tively. 

Migration 

Two aspects of the Soviet system tended to act as impediments 
to voluntary migration: state ownership of the land and, in theory 
at least, a rigid system of internal passports that regulated where 
people live and work. Despite these impediments, in the 1980s ap- 
proximately 15 million citizens (5 percent of the total population), 
some with the state's approval and some without it, changed their 
place of residence each year. The overwhelming majority of the 
migrants were young males sixteen years of age and older. Many 
of these were students. Millions of pioneers arrived at or departed 
from newly explored territories in western Siberia or the Soviet 
Far East. Many of the migrants abandoned the hard work and 



122 



Physical Environment and Population 

simple life on state farms and collective farms for the better pay 
and amenities of the largest cities. 

By far the largest percentage of migration (40 percent) has been 
from villages to cities: for example, between 1959 and 1979 the 
agricultural work force in the nonchernozem region of the Rus- 
sian Republic declined by 40 percent as a result of movement to 
cities. Since the Bolshevik Revolution, the urban population grew 
by almost 85 million people as a result of in-migration from rural 
areas alone. Between 1970 and 1979, more than 3 million people 
left the countryside annually, and just 1.5 million moved in the 
opposite direction. A substantial proportion of migration (34 per- 
cent) took place from city to city. 

The pervasive influence of the severe climate exerted pressure 
on migration patterns. In some parts of Siberia, the climate and 
working conditions were so harsh that shifts were set up, based 
on the recommendations of medical authorities, to return workers 
to more hospitable climes after a tour of two or three years. As 
an incentive to attract workers to sparsely settled areas such as 
western Siberia, the government established a system of bonuses 
and added credit toward retirement. Between 1970 and 1985, 
migration patterns began to adapt to the needs of the national econ- 
omy, and the long-standing maldistribution of natural and human 
resources began to improve. The incentives helped to reverse, at 
least temporarily, the negative migration stream out of Siberia in 
the first part of the 1970s. Still, the age- sex structure of the newly 
exploited areas was one typical for frontiers. Disproportionate num- 
bers of young males made the area far from conducive for estab- 
lishing a stable population base and labor force. 

In the 1980s, the government continued to find it difficult to 
stimulate migration out of the southern parts of the country and 
into the northern and eastern sections of the Soviet Union. Con- 
trary to the desired migratory pattern, the areas with the greatest 
levels of mobility were generally those with the lowest birth rates, 
in particular the Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Russian, Ukrain- 
ian, and Belorussian republics. In Soviet Central Asia, where birth 
rates were considerably higher, the levels of migration and popu- 
lation mobility were low. These demographic patterns were not 
seen by planners as contributing to the long-term solution of labor 
supply problems stemming from labor deficiencies in the central 
European region and labor surpluses in Soviet Central Asia. 

Because the government continued to maintain tight control over 
migration into or out of the country, between 1970 and 1985 the 
population remained largely a "closed" one, in which increases or 
decreases as a result of immigration or emigration were insignificant. 



123 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

According to figures released in 1989, some 140,000 persons 
emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1987 and 1988. Authorities 
expected the rate to stabilize at about 60,000 to 70,000 per year. 
Overall, observers estimated that as many as 500,000 emigres, 
mostly Jews, Armenians, Germans, and Poles, were allowed to leave 
between 1960 and 1985. 

Distribution and Density 

Because so much of its territory is poorly suited for human habi- 
tation, the Soviet Union on the whole is a sparsely populated coun- 
try. In 1987 it registered an average density of twelve inhabitants 
per square kilometer. The density varied greatly by region, however 
(see fig. 9). In the mid-1980s, the density of the European portion 
of the Soviet Union was thirty-four inhabitants per square kilo- 
meter, about the same as in the American South. The republics 
with the greatest population density were the Moldavian, Arme- 
nian, and Ukrainian republics (see table 12, Appendix A). 

Moskovskaya Oblast, largely because of its historical, cultural, 
and political significance and the presence in it of the Moscow urban 
metropolitan area, was one of the country's most thickly settled 
oblasts. Despite attempts to limit the capital's growth, Moscow con- 
tinued to attract numerous migrants each year. The entire region 
between the Volga and Oka rivers had a high concentration of set- 
tlements. The most sparsely populated regions of the country have 
persistently been in the Far North, which is considerably more 
sparsely settled than Alaska. 

The "center of gravity" of the population is gradually moving 
in a southeasterly direction and in the mid-1980s was located west 
of the Urals just below the city of Kuybyshev. The main belt of set- 
tlement forms a wedge whose base is a line going from Leningrad 
to the Moldavian Republic. In the European part of the Soviet 
Union, its northern boundary runs through the cities of Cherepovets, 
Vologda, and Perm'; the southern arm passes through Kherson, 
Rostov-na-Donu, Volgograd, and Chelyabinsk. Significant concen- 
trations of population outside this wedge were found in the Cauca- 
sus and in Central Asia. The roughly 10 percent of the population 
in Siberia was concentrated in a rather narrow belt surrounding the 
two major transportation arteries of the Trans-Siberian Railway (see 
Glossary) and the Baykal-Amur Main Line (BAM — see Glossary) 
and in the energy-producing region of western Siberia. Future popu- 
lation growth and settlement in Siberia and the Soviet Far East for 
the most part was expected to take place in the environs of the BAM. 

The rural population was also concentrated in the southern and 
central sections of the European part. Densities of more than 100 



124 



Physical Environment and Population 

persons per square kilometer were found in the Dnestr River Val- 
ley and in several parts of the Ukrainian Republic, the Soviet 
Union's traditional breadbasket. Rural population density tapered 
off in the taiga zone and sharply diminished in the tundra of the 
European north. The arid steppes and semideserts in the southeast 
European part were lightly settled. 

Starting in the 1970s, an active campaign was mounted to reduce 
and consolidate the number of rural populated places in the Soviet 
Union. The number of rural places in the nonchernozem region 
of the Russian Republic alone declined from 180,000 to 118,000 
between 1959 to 1979. Nationally, a reasonable estimate of the num- 
bers of phased-out ("future-less settlements" in Russian) popu- 
lated places, most with fewer than 200 inhabitants, was more than 
100,000. 

The ninth, tenth, and eleventh five-year plans (1971-85) provided 
for stimulating further economic development and settlement in 
Siberia and the Soviet Far East. Under Gorbachev, reports indi- 
cated a possible change in emphasis to stress modernization and 
intensification of production by using existing capacity in the 
European portion. 

Marriage, Divorce, and the Family 

As early as the mid-1970s, open acknowledgment and frank dis- 
cussions of demographic problems in the Soviet Union began to 
take place. The family, as 4 'the key social unit," was at the center 
of these discussions. For many years, population growth was taken 
for granted. In the 1970s, however, authorities became concerned 
about declining birth rates in the European part of the Soviet Union, 
especially among Russians. In addition to urbanization and indus- 
trialization, other factors affecting family size were rising divorce 
rates, an acute shortage of housing, and poor health care. Another 
factor was that Slavic women had the world's highest abortion rates. 

The Twenty-Fifth Party Congress of the Communist Party of 
the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1976 was the first to recognize that 
the Soviet Union had a demographic problem, and it proposed 
measures to deal with "the aggravation of the demographic situa- 
tion." Two key areas pertaining to the family were mentioned as 
contributing to an intensification of population problems: the lower- 
ing of birth rates to levels below those necessary for replacement 
and for guaranteeing an adequate supply of labor; and continuing 
high rates of divorce. The Twenty-Sixth Party Congress (1981) 
and the Twenty- Seventh Party Congress (1986) established a 
pronatalist policy that probably accounted for a slight upswing in 
fertility as the decade progressed. 



125 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 




126 



Physical Environment and Population 

In the 1970s and 1980s, some population problems were associ- 
ated with a developmental trend that the socialist system had tradi- 
tionally encouraged, i.e., urbanization and industrialization. The 
demographic price for this process is normally paid in declining 
birth rates and shrinking family sizes. An efficient modern econ- 
omy ordinarily can adjust to a smaller work force. The Soviet econ- 
omy, however, has remained relatively labor intensive in the key 
agricultural and industrial sectors, and as a result there were labor 
shortages in many of the larger cities. 

The 1979 census registered more than 66 million families; by 
the mid-1980s there were about 70 million families. In 1979 the 
overwhelming majority (86.2 percent) of urban families consisted 
of two to four members. In the urban areas of the European part, 
in particular, the trend was to limit the number of children to two 
and in many cases to only one. In 1979 about 60 percent of the 
families with children under eighteen years of age had only one 
child; 33 percent had two children. The negative consequences of 
this trend, especially in the European part of the country, led the 
government to begin an active campaign to encourage families to 
have a third child. 

Population Problems and Policies 

Unless unfavorable trends can be reversed, the Soviet Union 
eventually will have to deal with the threat of depopulation in much 
of the European portion of the Russian Republic and in the Esto- 
nian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Belorussian, and Ukrainian republics, 
the very political, military, and economic base of the country. Per- 
sistently low birth rates and a sharp downward trend in family size 
among most Soviet Europeans has been the root cause. The pat- 
tern became more obvious, and the alarms became louder, in the 
late 1970s and 1980s. 

The declining Russian representation in the multinational Soviet 
population has caused great concern. Such a trend has serious in- 
ternational and national political, economic, social, and military 
implications. For example, with fewer native speakers of Russian, 
it becomes progressively more difficult to maintain Russian as the 
national language. As the Russian language declines in importance, 
the challenge of both raising the national level of education and 
training a skilled labor force becomes more complicated and costly. 
The armed forces, as well, face the prospect of adding to their ranks 
a smaller percentage of Soviet Europeans and a greater share of 
Soviet Asians, who may not serve with the dedication of the Slavs 
and whose service imposes additional demands on the military in 
terms of special training to improve communications skills. 



127 



Village in the Tadzhik Republic near Dushanbe at the foot of the Hissar 
Mountains about 160 kilometers north of the Afghan frontier 

Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 



129 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

In the 1970s and 1980s, the government introduced some key 
initiatives that were intended to ameliorate demographic difficul- 
ties: occupations restricted to males for health and safety reasons 
were expanded; maternity leave was extended to one year after the 
birth (eight weeks fully paid), and the leave was counted as ser- 
vice time; lump-sum cash payments for each birth were provided, 
with higher premiums for the third and fourth child; child support 
payments to low-income families were increased; and families were 
to be given preferential treatment in the assignment of housing and 
other services. 

At the same time, campaigns were introduced aimed at raising 
overall ' 'demographic literacy" (developing a citizenry better in- 
formed about the national demographic situation) and improving 
public health. By far the most publicized and most controversial 
of these campaigns was the attack on alcoholism and public 
drunkenness. The sale of alcoholic beverages was sharply curtailed 
in the mid-1980s. Soviet authorities felt that the elimination of this 
traditional social ill would have an immediate and direct impact 
on demographic processes by eliminating a major cause of divorce 
and premature disability and death. In addition, promoting safe 
and healthful working and living conditions was one of the chief 
aims of the growing numbers of officials and citizens concerned 
with the environment. 

The success of these government measures remained in doubt 
in 1989. Persuasive evidence supported the view that patterns of 
urbanization, extreme reluctance to migrate, and higher fertility 
rates in Soviet Central Asia have continued. These demographic 
patterns, together with the strengths and limitations of the physi- 
cal environment, have affected such critical issues as the cohesion 
of the Soviet federation and its nationality representation, the 
acutely uneven distribution of natural and human resources, in- 
vestment in industrial development, and the character and com- 
position of the work force and the military. 

* * * 

By far the most important English-language source of current 
information on the geography and population of the Soviet Union 
is the monthly journal Soviet Geography. Much of the information 
in the chapter derives from the excellent articles in this journal, 
some of which were written by its founder and editor, Theodore 
Shabad, who was, until his death in 1987, the foremost expert on 
the subject in the United States. Some standard texts on the geo- 
graphy of the Soviet Union are Paul E. Lydolph's Geography of the 



130 



Physical Environment and Population 



U.S.S.R; J. P. Cole's Geography of the Soviet Union; David Hooson's 
The Soviet Union: People and Regions; G. Melvyn Howe's The Soviet 
Union: A Geographical Study; and William Henry Parker's The Soviet 
Union. Pending publication of the final results of the 1989 all-union 
census, the most important source of data on the Soviet popula- 
tion has been the statistical handbook Naselenie SSSR, 1987. In re- 
cent years, more information has been made available to both 
Western and Soviet scholars on demographic developments in the 
Soviet Union. As of 1989, among the experts on the subject in the 
United States were Murray Feshbach, Stephen Rapawy, and W. 
Ward Kingkade. All three, especially Feshbach, have written ex- 
tensively on various aspects of Soviet population (fertility, mortal- 
ity, age and sex structure, and ethnicity). Particularly valuable was 
Kingkade 's article ' 'Demographic Trends in the Soviet Union." 
(For further information and complete citations, see Bibliography.) 



131 



Chapter 4. Nationalities and Religions 



People of various nationalities and religions 



ON FEBRUARY 17, 1988, General Secretary Mikhail S. Gor- 
bachev declared that the nationalities question in the Soviet Union 
was a "crucially important vital question" of the times. He went 
on to call for a "very thorough review' ' of Soviet nationalities policy, 
an acknowledgment of the failure of the past Soviet regimes' 
attempts to solve the problem of nationalities that was inherited 
from tsarist Russia. With remarkable candor, Gorbachev admit- 
ted that the problem not only still existed but that it was more acute 
than ever. 

For close to seventy years, Soviet leaders had maintained that 
frictions among the many nationalities of the Soviet Union had 
been eliminated and that the Soviet Union consisted of a family 
of nations living harmoniously together, each national culture add- 
ing to and enriching the new Soviet culture and promoting the de- 
velopment of a single Soviet nationality. However, the national 
ferment that shook almost every corner of the Soviet Union in the 
late 1980s proved that seventy years of communist rule had failed 
to obliterate national and ethnic differences and that traditional 
cultures and religions would reemerge given the slightest oppor- 
tunity. This unpleasant reality facing Gorbachev and his colleagues 
meant that, short of relying on the traditional use of force, they 
had to find alternative solutions in order to prevent the disintegra- 
tion of the Soviet empire. Whether they succeed or fail in this task 
will, to a large degree, determine the future of the Soviet Union. 

The extensive multinational empire that the Bolsheviks (see Glos- 
sary) inherited after their revolution was created by tsarist expan- 
sion over some four centuries. Some nationality groups came into 
the empire voluntarily, but most were brought in by force. Gener- 
ally, the Russians and most of the non-Russian subjects of the 
empire shared litde in common — culturally, religiously, or linguisti- 
cally. More often than not, two or more diverse nationalities were 
collocated on the same territory. Therefore, national antagonisms 
built up over the years not only against the Russians but often 
among some of the subject nations as well. 

Like its tsarist predecessor, the Soviet state has remained ethni- 
cally complex (see fig. 10). Indeed, the distinctions between the 
various nationalities of the Soviet Union have sharpened during 
the Soviet period. The concessions granted national cultures and 
the limited autonomy tolerated in the union republics (see Glos- 
sary) in the 1920s led to the development of national elites and a 



135 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 




136 



Nationalities and Religions 



heightened sense of national identity. Subsequent repression and 
Russianization (see Glossary) fostered resentment against domi- 
nation by Moscow and promoted further growth of national con- 
sciousness. National feelings were also exacerbated in the Soviet 
multinational state by increased competition for resources, services, 
and jobs. 

Nationalities of the Soviet Union 

The official Soviet census of 1989 listed over 100 nationalities 
in the Soviet Union (see table 13, Appendix A). Each had its own 
history, culture, and language. Each possessed its own sense of na- 
tional identity and national consciousness. The position of each 
nationality in the Soviet Union depended to a large degree on its 
size, the percentage of the people using the national language as 
their first language, the degree of its integration into the Soviet 
society, and its territorial-administrative status. This position was 
also dependent on each nationality's share of membership in the 
Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), the number of stu- 
dents in higher institutions, the number of scientific workers, and 
the degree of urbanization of each nationality. 

The various nationalities differed gready in size. On the one 
hand, the Russians, who constituted about 50.8 percent of the popu- 
lation, numbered about 145 million in 1989. On the other hand, 
half of the nationalities listed in the census together accounted for 
only 0.5 percent of the total population, most of them having fewer 
than 100,000 people. Twenty-two nationalities had more than 1 
million people each. Fifteen of the major nationalities had their 
own union republics, which together comprised the federation 
known as the Soviet Union. 

The nationalities having union republic status commanded more 
political and economic power than other nationalities and found 
it easier to maintain their own language and culture. In 1989 some 
nationalities formed an overwhelming majority within their own 
republics; one nationality (the Kazakhs), however, lacked even a 
majority. In addition to the fifteen nationalities having union repub- 
lics, some others had their own territorial units, such as autono- 
mous republics, autonomous oblasts, and autonomous okruga (see 
table 14, Appendix A). The remaining nationalities did not have 
territorial units of their own and in most cases only constituted 
minorities in the Russian Republic (see table 15, Appendix A). 

The nationalities that have had a significant political and eco- 
nomic impact on the Soviet Union include the fifteen nationalities 
that have their own union republics and the non-union republic 
nationalities that numbered at least 1 million people in 1989. They 



137 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

are the Slavic nationalities, the Baltic nationalities, the nationali- 
ties of the Caucasus, the Central Asian nationalities, and a few 
other nationalities. 

Slavic Nationalities 

Since the establishment of the Soviet Union, the most dominant 
group of people numerically, politically, culturally, and economi- 
cally have been the Slavs, particularly the East Slavs. Although 
little is known of the early history of the Slavs, they had by the 
seventh century A.D. divided into three distinguishable groups: 
the West Slavs, ancestors of the Poles, the Czechs, and the Slovaks; 
the South Slavs, ancestors of the Bulgarians, the Slovenes, the Serbs, 
and the Croatians; and the East Slavs, ancestors of the Russians, 
the Ukrainians, and the Belorussians. The East Slavic tribes set- 
tled along the Dnepr River in the present-day Ukrainian Repub- 
lic in the first centuries after the birth of Christ and from there 
spread northward and eastward. In the ninth century, these tribes 
became part of the foundation of Kievan Rus', the medieval state 
of the East Slavs ruled by a Varangian dynasty (see The East Slavs 
and the Varangians, ch. 1). 

The East Slavs enhanced their political union in the tenth cen- 
tury when they adopted Christianity as the state religion of Kievan 
Rus'. Nevertheless, tribal and regional differences persisted and 
became more marked as the realm of Kievan Rus' expanded. To 
the northwest, East Slavic tribes mixed with the local Baltic tribes, 
while in the north and northeast they mixed with the indigenous 
Finno-Ugric tribes. By the time Kievan Rus' began to disintegrate 
into a number of independent principalities in the twelfth century, 
the East Slavs were evolving into three separate people linguisti- 
cally and culturally: Russians to the north and northeast of Kiev, 
Belorussians to the northwest of Kiev, and Ukrainians around Kiev 
itself and to the south and southwest of Kiev. This process of eth- 
nic differentiation and consolidation was accelerated by the Mongol 
invasion of Kievan Rus' and its collapse as a political entity in the 
thirteenth century. For several centuries, the three East Slavic na- 
tionalities remained related culturally, linguistically, and to a great 
extent religiously. Nevertheless, each of them has been influenced 
by different political, economic, religious, and social developments, 
further separating them from each other (see The Rise of Regional 
Centers, ch. 1). 

Russians 

Russians have been the largest and most dominant nationality 
in both the Soviet Union and its predecessors, the Russian Empire 



138 



Nationalities and Religions 



\ 



and Muscovy. From the time of Muscovy's rise as the dominant 
principality in the northeast of the territory of Kievan Rus', a Rus- 
sian state continually extended its territory and enabled Ivan III 
(1462-1505) to proclaim himself "Ruler of all Rus'." Peter the 
Great (1682-1725) established the Russian Empire, which by the 
end of the nineteenth century reached the Baltic Sea in the north- 
west and the Black Sea in the southwest, the Pacific Ocean in the 
east, and the Pamirs in the south (see fig. 3). The Romanov 
Dynasty, which promoted Russian administrative control over the 
disparate nationalities in its domain, ruled for three centuries until 
it was overthrown in February 1917 (according to the Julian calen- 
dar (see Glossary); March 1917 according to the Gregorian calen- 
dar). After the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks in October 1917 
(November 1917), Russian domination of political, economic, and 
cultural life in the Soviet Union continued despite the rule of 
Joseph V. Stalin, who was Georgian by birth. Yet throughout their 
history, Russians themselves were subjected to oppressive rulers, 
whether tsarist or communist. Particularly devastating since the 
advent of communist rule in November 1917 were the Civil War 
(1918-21), forced collectivization and industrialization, the Great 
Terror (see Glossary), and World War II, each of which resulted 
in extreme hardship and loss of great numbers of Russian people. 

According to the 1989 census, some 145 million Russians con- 
stituted just over half of the population of the Soviet Union, although 
their share of the total has been declining steadily. A low fertility 
rate among the Russians and a considerably higher fertility rate 
among the peoples of Soviet Central Asia may make Russians a 
minority nationality by the year 2000. 

Most Russians lived in the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist 
Republic (Russian Republic), an immense area occupying three- 
fourths of the Soviet Union and stretching from Eastern Europe 
across the Ural Mountains and Siberia to the Kamchatka Penin- 
sula in the Pacific Ocean. Many other nationalities lived in the 
Russian Republic. Sixteen of the twenty autonomous republics were 
located here, as well as five of the eight autonomous oblasts and 
all ten of the autonomous okruga. But Russians also constituted sub- 
stantial minorities in the populations of most non-Russian union 
republics in the Soviet Union (see table 16, Appendix A). Only 
a small percentage of Russians claimed fluency in the languages 
of the non-Russian republics in which they resided. 

In the late 1980s, Russians were the second most urban nation- 
ality in the Soviet Union (only Jews were proportionally more 
urbanized). Russians constituted about two-thirds of the entire 
urban population of the Soviet Union; all major cities in the Soviet 



139 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Union had a large Russian population. In addition, Moscow, the 
largest city and capital of the Soviet Union, served as the adminis- 
trative center for the Russian Republic. The domination by Rus- 
sians has been evident in almost every phase of Soviet life and has 
increased in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1972, 62.5 percent of the mem- 
bers of the Politburo, the highest organ of the CPSU, were Rus- 
sians. In 1986 the percentage of Russians rose to 84.6 and then 
to 89 in 1989. Generally, Russians were the party second secre- 
taries and the chiefs of the Committee for State Security (Komitet 
gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti — KGB) in non-Russian republics. 
Russians also constituted a majority of CPSU membership, amount- 
ing to about 61 percent in the 1980s. Only Jews and Georgians 
have also had representation in the party that was higher than their 
proportion of the population. Russian dominance of the CPSU has 
also helped them dominate Soviet society. 

Russians held a high percentage of the most important positions 
in government, industry, agriculture, education, science, and the 
arts, especially in the non-Russian republics. The number of Rus- 
sians attending higher education institutions also was dispropor- 
tionate to their share of the population. Only Jews, Armenians, 
and Georgians had a proportionally higher number of students at 
these institutions. 

Russian language and culture has had special status throughout 
the Soviet Union. The Russian language has been the common 
language in government organizations as well as in most economic, 
social, and cultural institutions. Higher education in many fields 
has been provided almost exclusively in Russian, and mastery of 
that language has been an important criterion for admission to in- 
stitutions of higher learning. Administrative and supervisory posts 
in non-Russian republics were often held by Russians having littie 
knowledge of the native language. In 1986 Russian was the lan- 
guage used to publish 78 percent of the books by number of titles 
and 86 percent of the books by number of copies. The publication 
of magazines and newspapers printed in Russian and in the other 
indigenous languages has been equally disproportionate. 

The homeland of about 119.8 million Russians and over 27 mil- 
lion non-Russian people, the Russian Republic also provided sub- 
stantial industrial, agricultural, and natural resources to the Soviet 
Union. Nevertheless, in 1989 the Russian Republic, alone among 
the fifteen union republics, had no party apparatus separate from 
that of the CPSU. The functions performed in non-Russian repub- 
lics by republic-level CPSU organizations were performed for the 
Russian Republic by the central agencies of the CPSU. 



140 



Nationalities and Religions 



Ukrainians 

Ukrainians trace their ancestry to the East Slavic tribes that in- 
habited the present-day Ukrainian Republic in the first centuries 
after the birth of Christ and were part of the state of Kievan Rus' 
formed in the ninth century. For a century after the breakup 
of Kievan Rus', the independent principalities of Galicia and 
Volhynia served as Ukrainian political and cultural centers. In the 
fourteenth century, Galicia was absorbed by Poland, and Volhynia, 
together with Kiev, became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithua- 
nia. In 1569 Volhynia and Kiev also came under Polish rule, an 
event that significantly affected Ukrainian society, culture, lan- 
guage, and religion. Ukrainian peasants, except for those who fled 
to join the cossacks (see Glossary) in the frontier regions southeast 
of Poland, were enserfed. Many Ukrainian nobles were Polonized. 

The continuous oppression of the Ukrainian people by the Polish 
nobility led to a series of popular insurrections, culminating in 1648, 
when Ukrainian Cossacks joined in a national uprising. Intermit- 
tent wars with Poland forced the Ukrainian Cossacks to place 
Ukraine under the protection of the Muscovite tsar. A prolonged 
war between Muscovy and Poland followed, ending in 1667 with 
a treaty that split Ukraine along the Dnepr River. Ukrainian ter- 
ritory on the right (generally western) bank of the Dnepr remained 
under Poland, while Ukrainian territory on the left (generally 
eastern) bank was placed under the suzerainty of the Muscovite 
tsar. Although both segments of Ukraine were granted autonomous 
status, Muscovy and Poland followed policies to weaken Ukrainian 
autonomy. A number of uprisings by Ukrainian peasantry led to 
the crushing of the remainder of Ukrainian autonomy in Poland 
(see Expansion and Westernization, ch. 1). Ukrainian self-rule 
under the tsar ended after Mazepa, the Ukrainian hetman (leader), 
defected to the Swedish side during the war between Muscovy and 
Sweden at the beginning of the eighteenth century. In 1775 
Catherine the Great dispersed the Ukrainian Cossacks and enserfed 
those Ukrainian peasants who had remained free. The partitions 
of Poland at the end of the eighteenth century placed most of the 
Ukrainian territory on the right bank of the Dnepr River under 
Russian rule. The westernmost part of Ukraine (known as western 
Ukraine) was incorporated into the Austrian Empire. 

The resurgence of Ukrainian national consciousness in the nine- 
teenth century was fostered by a renewed interest among intellectuals 
in Ukrainian history, culture, and language and the founding of 
many scholarly, cultural, and social societies. The Russian govern- 
ment responded by harassing, imprisoning, and exiling leading 



141 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Ukrainian intellectuals. Ukrainian academic and social societies 
were disbanded. Publications, plays, and concerts in Ukrainian 
were forbidden. Finally, the existence of a Ukrainian language and 
nationality was officially denied. Nevertheless, a Ukrainian national 
movement in the Russian Empire persisted, spurred partially by 
developments in western Ukraine, where Ukrainians in the more 
liberal Austrian Empire had far greater freedom to develop their 
culture and language. 

After the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917 and the Austro- 
Hungarian Empire in 1918, Ukrainians in both empires proclaimed 
their independence and established national republics. In 1919 the 
two republics united into one Ukrainian national state. This unifi- 
cation, however, could not withstand the aggression of both the 
Red and White Russian forces and the hostile Polish forces in 
western Ukraine. Ukraine again was partitioned, with western 
Ukraine incorporated into the new Polish state and the rest of 
Ukraine established as the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 
March 1919, which was later incorporated into the Soviet Union 
when it was formed in December 1922. 

In the decade of the 1920s, the Ukrainian Republic experienced 
a period of Ukrainization. Ukrainian communists enjoyed a great 
deal of autonomy in running the republic, and Ukrainian culture 
and language dominated. Stalin's rise to power, however, halted 
the process of Ukrainization. Consequentiy, Ukrainian intellectual 
and cultural elites were either executed or deported, and leading 
Ukrainian party leaders were replaced by non-Ukrainians. The 
peasantry was forcibly collectivized, leading to a mass famine in 
1932-33 in which several million peasants starved to death. Point- 
ing to the fact that grain was forcibly requisitioned from the peasan- 
try despite the protests of the Soviet government in the Ukrainian 
Republic, some historians believe that Stalin knowingly brought 
about the famine to stop national ferment in the Ukrainian Republic 
and break the peasants' resistance to collectivization. When western 
Ukraine was incorporated into the Soviet Union following the Nazi- 
Soviet Nonaggression Pact of 1939, the population suffered terror 
and mass deportations. 

When the Germans attacked the Soviet Union in 1941 , Ukrain- 
ians anticipated establishing an independent Ukraine. As the Red 
Army retreated eastward, Ukrainian nationalists proclaimed an in- 
dependent state, but the invading Germans arrested and interned 
its leaders. Ukrainian nationalist forces consequently began a 
resistance movement against both the occupying Germans and the 
Soviet partisans operating in the Ukrainian Republic. When the 
Red Army drove the Germans out of the Ukrainian Republic, 



142 



Russian children on the train to 
Krasnoyarsk, in Siberia, 
Russian Republic 
Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 



Armenian family celebrating 
the New Year at a fair in the 
central square, Yerevan, 
Armenian Republic 
Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Ukrainian partisans turned their struggle (which continued until 
1950) against the Soviet armed forces (the name Red Army was 
dropped just after the war) and Polish communist forces in western 
Ukraine. The Soviet regime deported Ukrainian intelligentsia to 
Siberia and imported Russians into the Ukrainian Republic as part 
of their pacification and Russification (see Glossary) efforts. 

The vast majority of Ukrainians, the second largest nationality 
in the Soviet Union with about 44 million people in 1989, lived 
in the Ukrainian Republic. Substantial numbers of Ukrainians also 
lived in the Russian, Kazakh, and Moldavian republics. Many non- 
Ukrainians lived in the Ukrainian Republic, where the Russians, 
with over 11 million, constituted the largest group. 

Ukrainians have a distinctive language, culture, and history. In 
1989, despite strong Russifying influence, about 81.1 percent of 
Ukrainians residing in their own republic claimed Ukrainian as 
their first language. 

By the 1980s, the majority of Ukrainians, once predominantly 
agrarian, lived in cities. The major Ukrainian cities in 1989 were 
Kiev, the capital of the Ukrainian Republic, with a population of 
2.6 million, and Khar'kov, Dnepropetrovsk, Odessa, and Donetsk, 
all with over 1 million people. 

Although Ukrainians constituted about 15 percent of the Soviet 
Union's population in 1989, their educational and employment op- 
portunities appeared unequal to their share of the population. In 
the 1970s, they ranked only eleventh out of seventeen major na- 
tionalities (the nationalities corresponding to the fifteen union repub- 
lics plus Jews and Tatars) in the number of students in secondary 
and higher education and ninth in the number of scientific work- 
ers in proportion to their share of the total population. Since the 
death of Stalin in 1953, the number of Ukrainians in the CPSU 
has steadily increased. Nevertheless, Ukrainians remained under- 
represented in the party relative to their share of the population. 
This was particularly true in the Ukrainian Republic, where in 
the 1970s the Ukrainian proportion of party membership was sub- 
stantially below their proportion of the population. The percen- 
tage of Russians in the CPSU in the Ukrainian Republic, however, 
was considerably higher than their share of the republic's popula- 
tion. Although in the past Ukrainians had held a disproportion- 
ately high percentage of seats on the CPSU Central Committee, 
since 1961 their share of membership in this body has steadily 
declined to 13 percent of the seats in 1986. 

Belorussians 

The ancestors of present-day Belorussians were among those East 
Slavic tribes that settled the northwestern part of Kievan Rus' 



144 



Nationalities and Religions 



territory, mixing with and assimilating the indigenous Baltic tribes. 
After the Mongol invasion in the thirteenth century and the col- 
lapse of Kievan Rus', Belorussian lands, together with the greater 
part of Ukraine, became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. 
When in 1569 the Grand Duchy of Lithuania joined in dynastic 
union with Poland to form the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, 
Belorussians shared with Poles and Lithuanians a common king 
and parliament. For the next two centuries, Polish influence in 
Belorussia was dominant. Belorussian nobles, seeking the same 
privileges as their Polish counterparts, became Polonized and con- 
verted from Orthodoxy to Catholicism. Only the peasants retained 
their Belorussian national culture and Orthodox religion. 

With the partitions of Poland at the end of the eighteenth cen- 
tury, Belorussian lands passed to the Russian Empire. The tsarist 
government viewed Belorussians as simply backward, somewhat 
Polonized, Russians. It persecuted those Belorussians who had be- 
come Uniates in 1596 and forced them to reconvert to Orthodoxy 
(see Catholic, this ch.). Nevertheless, in the second half of the nine- 
teenth century Belorussians experienced a national and political 
revival and developed a renewed awareness of their separateness 
from both the Poles and the Russians. The fledgling Belorussian 
political movement at the turn of the century reached its zenith 
during the February Revolution in 1917 and culminated in the 
establishment of the Belorussian Democratic Republic in March 

1918. The newly created republic had its independence guaran- 
teed by the German military. But when Germany collapsed, the 
new republic was unable to resist Belorussian Bolsheviks, who were 
supported by the Bolshevik government in Russia. On January 1, 

1919, the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic was established and 
was subsequendy incorporated into the Soviet Union. The western 
portion of Belorussia was ceded to Poland. At the end of World 
War II, that territory was incorporated into the Soviet Union. 

Numerically the smallest of the three East Slavic nationalities, 
Belorussians in 1989 numbered about 10 million people and con- 
stituted about 3.5 percent of the Soviet Union's total population, 
making them the fourth largest nationality in the country. Although 
most of them lived in the Belorussian Republic, over 1.2 million 
Belorussians lived in the Russian Republic, with sizable Belorus- 
sian minorities in the Ukrainian, Kazakh, and Latvian republics. 
Belorussians, like Russians and Ukrainians, speak an East Slavic 
language. Prior to 1917, both Latin and Cyrillic (see Glossary) 
alphabets were used, but subsequently Cyrillic became the official 
alphabet. In 1989 about 71 percent of Belorussians in the Soviet 



145 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Union considered the Belorussian language their first language, 
while the remainder considered Russian their native tongue. 

In the late 1980s, the Belorussian Republic was the third most 
urbanized in the Soviet Union, with 64 percent of the republic's 
population residing in urban areas in 1987 — a jump of 33 percent 
from 1959. Of the Belorussian population in the Soviet Union, 
about half lived in urban areas. This apparent anomaly was caused 
chiefly by the large number of Russians residing in the republic's 
cities. The capital and largest city in the Belorussian Republic, 
Minsk, had a population of almost 1 .6 million people in 1989. Other 
major cities were Gomel', Mogilev, Vitebsk, Grodno, and Brest, 
all of which had populations of fewer than 500,000. 

Although Belorussians were the fourth most prevalent national- 
ity in the Soviet Union, they ranked only fifteenth in the number 
of students in higher education institutions and tenth in the num- 
ber of scientific workers in the Soviet Union. They have fared much 
better in terms of sharing political power, however. Between 1970 
and 1989, Belorussian membership in the CPSU has been fairly 
representative of their share of the population. In the CPSU Cen- 
tral Committee, Belorussians have actually held a somewhat higher 
percentage of full-member seats than warranted by their share of 
population. Paradoxically, they have not fared so well in their own 
republic. Although Belorussians made up 78.7 percent of the popu- 
lation of the republic in 1989, they had only 70 percent of the party 
membership in the Belorussian Republic. Russians, however, with 
only 12 percent of the population of the republic, constituted about 
19 percent of the party membership. 

Other Slavs 

Poles made up the largest of the West Slavic nationalities in the 
Soviet Union. Although their numbers have been declining, in 1989 
over 1 million Poles remained. Most of them lived in the western 
republics — the Belorussian, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, and Latvian 
republics. Bulgarians, belonging to the South Slavic group, num- 
bered nearly 379,000 in 1989. A majority of the Bulgarians lived 
in the Ukrainian Republic, with a large number residing also in 
the Moldavian Republic. In the 1980s, small numbers of Czechs 
and Slovaks (members of the West Slavic group) and Croatians 
and Serbs (members of the South Slavic group) also lived in the 
Soviet Union. 

Baltic Nationalities 

Although each is a separate and distinct nationality, the three 
Baltic peoples share many characteristics and experiences. Residing 



146 



Nationalities and Religions 



in the northwestern corner of the Soviet Union, the Baltic peoples 
have been the most Western oriented of all the Soviet nationali- 
ties. They have had a strong and highly developed national con- 
sciousness, primarily because of the historic German and Polish 
influences and the religious heritage of western Europe. They were 
the only non-Russian nationalities to have experienced significant 
periods of political independence after World War I. It should be 
noted that the United States government has not recognized the 
incorporation of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania into the Soviet 
Union. Although in 1989 the approximately 5.6 million members 
of the three Baltic nationalities made up only a small fraction of 
the Soviet population, they have achieved a higher level of eco- 
nomic and industrial development and social modernization than 
any other peoples in the Soviet Union. 

Lithuanians 

The ancestors of modern Lithuanians first settled in the present- 
day Belorussian Republic around 2000 B.C. Beginning in the fourth 
century A.D., Lithuanian tribes were steadily pushed northwest 
by Slavic tribes until they occupied the territory of the present- 
day Lithuanian Republic. United into a loose monarchy by King 
Mindaugas at the beginning of the thirteenth century, Lithuanians 
began to expand south and east. By the mid-fourteenth century, 
Lithuania had become one of the largest kingdoms in medieval 
Europe. With Vilnius as its capital, Lithuania encompassed much 
of what had been Kievan Rus', including the present-day Belorus- 
sian and Ukrainian republics. 

The marriage of the Lithuanian king to the Polish queen in 1385 
began a period of dynastic union that culminated in the creation 
of the Polish- Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1569. The union with 
Poland had a profound influence on Lithuanians. For example, 
Polonized Western culture was superimposed on native Lithua- 
nian culture, Catholicism was established as the national religion, 
and Lithuanian nobility was almost completely Polonized. 

By the end of the eighteenth century, most of Lithuania, along 
with parts of Poland, was incorporated into the Russian Empire. 
The remaining part of Lithuania, known as Lithuania Minor, be- 
came part of Prussia. After the Lithuanian national revival of the 
nineteenth century emerged in Lithuania Minor, it spread to the 
rest of Lithuania. When the Poles rose in an anti- tsarist, anti- 
Russian revolt in 1830, Lithuanians joined them. They did so again 
in 1863. And during the Revolution of 1905 in Russia, the As- 
sembly of Vilnius raised the question of Lithuanian autonomy. By 
the time of the revolutions of 1917 and the Civil War that followed, 



147 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Lithuanians strove for nothing less than national independence. 
To reach that goal, they had to fight not only the Red Army but 
also the Germans and the Poles. 

The independent Lithuanian state that emerged after the strug- 
gle was a democratic republic. It lasted until 1926, when it was 
toppled by rightist forces, which then established a form of benevo- 
lent dictatorship. That government lasted until 1940, when Lithu- 
ania was absorbed by the Soviet Union following the Nazi- Soviet 
Nonaggression Pact of 1939. Thousands of Lithuanians were 
deported eastward by the Soviet government, the country's econ- 
omy was nationalized, the peasantry was collectivized, and Catholic 
believers and Lithuanian intellectuals were persecuted. Not sur- 
prisingly, Lithuanians, like other nationalities in the western regions 
of the Soviet Union, greeted the attacking German army in 1941 
as liberators. When the Germans refused to recognize their indepen- 
dence, however, Lithuanian nationalists engaged in underground 
resistance and partisan activity against them. After the Red Army's 
recapture of Lithuania in 1944, nationalists turned against the Rus- 
sians. Guerrilla warfare against Soviet occupation did not end until 
the late 1940s. 

In 1989 an overwhelming majority of the approximately 3 mil- 
lion Lithuanians resided in the Lithuanian Republic, the largest 
of the three Baltic republics. Small communities of Lithuanians 
were also in other republics. Although Lithuanians have resisted 
emigration, they have not been able to prevent immigration of Rus- 
sians and other nationalities into the Lithuanian Republic. Lithu- 
anians constituted about 80 percent of the residents of the republic 
in 1989, while Russians and Poles made up most of the remainder. 

Lithuanians speak an Indo-European language that is distinct 
from both the Germanic and the Slavic languages. In 1989 the vast 
majority of Lithuanians considered Lithuanian their first language. 

In 1987 about half of all Lithuanians were urban residents. But 
because a large number of Russians in the Lithuanian Republic 
lived in the cities, about 67 percent of the population of the repub- 
lic was urban. The largest city in Lithuania was Vilnius, the capi- 
tal of the republic, with a population of about 582,000 in 1989. 
Four other cities had populations of over 100,000. Relative to their 
share of the Soviet population, Lithuanians ranked high in terms 
of education and technological advancement. Although Lithuanians 
were the twelfth most populous nationality in the Soviet Union, 
they ranked seventh in the 1970s in both the number of students 
in higher education institutions and the number of scientific 
workers. Lithuanian membership in the CPSU was not in equal 
ratio to Lithuanians' share of the population. Also, Lithuanian 



148 



Panoramic view of Riga, Latvian Republic 
Courtesy Jonathan Tetzlaff 

representation on the CPSU Central Committee has been less than 
their share of the population. Native Lithuanians, however, have 
in the past held the most important positions in the party in the 
Lithuanian Republic. 

Latvians 

Like the Lithuanians, Latvians are descended from the tribes 
that migrated into the Baltic area during the second millennium 
B.C. Subsequently, they mixed with the indigenous Finno-Ugric 
tribes and formed a loose defensive union of Latvian tribes. Until 
the end of the thirteenth century, these tribes were preoccupied 
with the constant threat of invasion and subjugation, first by the 
Vikings and the Slavs and later by the Germans. Early in the thir- 
teenth century, the Germanic Order of the Brethren of the Sword 
forcibly began to convert the pagan Latvians to Christianity. They 
were finally subdued by the Livonian Order of the Teutonic 
Knights, which then established the Livonian Confederation, a state 
controlled by landowning German barons and Catholic clergy but 
with no strong central authority. The Latvian people were reduced 
to enserfed peasants. By the end of the sixteenth century, the power 
of the Teutonic Knights had weakened considerably, and Latvia 
was partitioned between Sweden and Poland, with only the Duchy 



149 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

of Courland remaining autonomous under the Polish crown. Rus- 
sia, desiring to reach the Baltic Sea, also wanted Latvian territory. 
These desires were realized in the reign of Peter the Great, when 
Sweden was forced to cede its Latvian territory to Russia. With 
the partitions of Poland in the late eighteenth century, the remainder 
of Latvia fell under Russian control. In the nineteenth century, 
Latvians experienced the same period of national reawakening as 
the other nations in European Russia. 

When the Russian Empire collapsed in 1917, Latvians sought 
national autonomy. Overrun by the German army, and formally 
ceded to Germany by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918, 
Latvian nationalists overcame both German and Soviet Russian 
forces before they established an independent Latvian Republic 
later in 1918. Latvian independence lasted until 1940, when the 
Latvians, like the Lithuanians and Estonians, were forced first to 
allow Soviet troops to be stationed on their soil and then to accept 
a communist government. Shortly thereafter, Latvia was incor- 
porated into the Soviet Union. Thousands of Latvians were killed 
or deported by the Soviet regime in 1940 and 1941 and again after 
the Red Army drove the Germans out of Latvia at the end of World 
War II. The Latvian peasantry was forcibly collectivized. Like the 
Lithuanians, Latvians carried on a guerrilla war against the Soviet 
occupation forces until 1948. 

The vast majority of the almost 1.5 million Latvians in the Soviet 
Union in 1989 lived in the Latvian Republic, but they constituted 
a bare majority (52 percent) in their own republic. Russians made 
up almost 34 percent of the republic's population, with about twice 
as many Russians residing in the Latvian Republic as in the 
Estonian Republic or the Lithuanian Republic. The rest of the 
population consisted of considerable numbers of Belorussians, 
Ukrainians, and Poles. 

The Latvian language is a distinct language, although it belongs 
to the same group of Indo-European languages as Lithuanian. The 
first books in Latvian appeared in the early seventeenth century, 
but literary Latvian was not fully established as a national lan- 
guage until the nineteenth century. In 1989 about 95 percent of 
all Latvians in the Soviet Union and 97.4 percent of those living 
in the Latvian Republic claimed Latvian as their first language. 

The Latvian Republic was one of the most urbanized republics 
in the Soviet Union. In 1989 about 70 percent of its population 
resided in urban areas, which made it the third most urban republic. 
The most populous city was the capital, Riga, with about 915,000 
people; two other cities had over 100,000 people each. Latvian cities 
have become very Russified, however, by the continuous influx 



150 



Nationalities and Religions 



of Russians. The Latvian Republic also has a highly educated popu- 
lation. In 1986 the republic ranked fourth in the proportion of people 
with higher or secondary education. The more urbanized Russians 
in the republic, however, reaped most of the benefits of higher edu- 
cation. In the early 1970s, Latvians ranked only twelfth in the num- 
ber of students in higher and secondary education and sixth in the 
number of scientific workers compared with their share of the Soviet 
population. 

In 1984 the percentage of Latvians in the CPSU in the Latvian 
Republic was well below the percentage of Latvians in the repub- 
lic. In the past, non-Latvians or Russified Latvians, some of whom 
could no longer speak Latvian, have held the top posts in the party 
leadership of the republic. 

Estonians 

Although they have a shared history with the Lithuanians and 
Latvians, Estonians are ethnically related to the Finns. The Finno- 
Ugric tribes from which Estonians are descended migrated into the 
present-day Estonian Republic thousands of years ago. They main- 
tained a separate existence and fought off invaders until the thir- 
teenth century, when they were subdued by Germans and Danes. 
With the Danish presence in Estonia more nominal than real, Ger- 
man control of Estonia lasted into the sixteenth century. Estonian 
nobility was Germanized, and the peasantry was enserfed. Attempts 
by German clergy to Christianize the Estonian peasantry were 
firmly rebuffed, and it was not until the eighteenth century that 
most of the Estonian population was finally converted to Luther- 
anism. 

During the sixteenth century, Russians, Swedes, and Poles fought 
for control of Estonia. Victorious Sweden held Estonia until the 
beginning of the eighteenth century, when it was forced to cede 
Estonia to Russia. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, 
Estonia, granted autonomy under its own nobility, abolished serf- 
dom and enjoyed a period of national reawakening that lasted for 
most of the century. In 1880, when the Russian government in- 
troduced a Russification policy for Estonia, the national conscious- 
ness had progressed too far to accept it. In 1918 Estonian 
nationalists, after fighting both the Germans and the Russians, 
declared the independence of Estonia. With the exception of a four- 
year period of dictatorship, Estonia flourished as a democracy until 
1940, when the Soviet Union absorbed it along with the other two 
Baltic states. The Estonians suffered the same fate as the Lithua- 
nians and Latvians. The Estonian peasantry was collectivized, and 
the Estonian national elite was imprisoned, executed, or exiled. 



151 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Altogether about 10 percent of the Estonian population was de- 
ported eastward. The remaining population was subjected to a pol- 
icy of Russification, made easier by the large influx of Russians 
into the republic. 

In 1989 Estonians were numerically the smallest nationality to 
have their own republic. According to the 1989 census, just over 
1 million Estonians lived in the Soviet Union, fewer than nationali- 
ties without their own republics, such as the Tatars, Germans, Jews, 
Chuvash, Bashkirs, and Poles. Almost 94 percent of the Estonians 
lived in the Estonian Republic, the smallest and northernmost of 
the three Baltic republics. In 1989 it had a population of almost 1 .6 
million, of which Estonians made up just over 61 percent. The 
largest national minority in the Estonian Republic was the Rus- 
sians, constituting over 30 percent of the population. A small Es- 
tonian population resided in the Russian Republic. 

Estonians, like Finns, speak a language that belongs to the Finno- 
Ugric group of languages. Like the other two Baltic nationalities, 
Estonians use the Latin alphabet. Of the three Baltic nationalities, 
Estonians have been the most tenacious in preserving their own 
language. In the 1989 census, 95.5 percent of the Estonians in the 
Soviet Union and 98.9 percent of those residing in the Estonian 
Republic considered Estonian their first language. 

Estonians, the majority of whom live in cities and towns, ranked 
as one of the most urbanized peoples in the Soviet Union. In 1989 
the Estonian Republic was the second most urbanized republic, 
with over 70 percent of its population residing in urban areas. 
However, only two cities in the Estonian Republic had a popula- 
tion of over 50,000: Tallin (482,000), the capital of the republic, 
and Tartu (115,000). 

The Estonian Republic ranked sixth among the republics in the 
number of citizens with secondary and higher education per thou- 
sand people. Within the Estonian Republic, the percentage of 
Estonians among the educated elite was very high, particularly in 
cultural and educational fields. Estonians also ranked high in the 
number of scientific workers. Whereas Estonians have dominated 
the cultural fields in the republic, Russians have held political power 
out of proportion to their share of the republic's population. Only 
52 percent .of the party members in the Estonian Republic were 
Estonians. In the past, Russians have not held the top posts in the 
Estonian Republic's party leadership, but many of the top Estonian 
leaders in the party were highly Russified. 

Nationalities of the Caucasus 

A small mountainous region in the southwestern portion of the 
Soviet Union known as the Caucasus has been the home to three 



152 



Nationalities and Religions 



major nationalities — the Armenians, Georgians, and Azerbay- 
dzhanis — and to twenty-four minor nationalities. The three major 
nationalities had their own union republics along the southern slopes 
of the Caucasus Mountains, sometimes known as the Transcau- 
casus. The other nationalities resided in their own autonomous 
republics or autonomous oblasts, mostly along the northern slopes 
of the Caucasus Mountains, or lived scattered within the bound- 
aries of the three Caucasian republics or the Russian Republic. 
Over 15.7 million people, or 5.5 percent of the total population 
of the Soviet Union in 1989, lived in the Caucasus, a region not 
much larger than the territory of the three Baltic republics. Although 
they have shared historical experiences, the three major nationali- 
ties of the Caucasus have far greater differences than the three Baltic 
nationalities or the three East Slavic nationalities. The differences 
are particularly sharp between the Azerbaydzhanis and the Arme- 
nians and Georgians. The Turkic- speaking Azerbaydzhanis are 
Muslims. Culturally and historically linked to both Iran and 
Turkey, they have not experienced independent statehood except 
for a brief period after the fall of the tsarist government in 1917. 
Both Armenians and Georgians have been Christian since the fourth 
century, and their history of independent statehood dates back to 
classical antiquity. 

Armenians 

The first Armenians inhabited the territory of the present-day 
Armenian Republic as early as the seventh century B.C. The first 
Armenian state, however, came into existence in the second cen- 
tury B.C. At least part of Armenia was able to retain a degree of 
independence until the beginning of the seventeenth century, when 
it was divided between the Ottoman Empire and the Persian Savafid 
Empire. The fate of the Armenians was particularly harsh in the 
Ottoman Empire. Persecution of Armenians by the Ottoman Turks 
reached its peak in 1915, when the government forcibly deported 
Armenians to Syria and Mesopotamia. Estimates of Armenians 
who were killed or otherwise perished at that time range as high 
as 1.5 million people. Only a small number of Armenians — about 
120,000— remained in Turkey in the 1970s. 

The Armenian Republic encompasses the territory of Persian 
Armenia, which was conquered by Russia in 1828. Here, as else- 
where in the Russian Empire, cultural nationalism of the nineteenth 
century was an important factor in the development of Armenian 
national consciousness. With the coming of the Bolshevik Revolu- 
tion, Armenian nationalists joined the Georgians and the Azer- 
baydzhanis to form the short-lived Transcaucasian Federated 



153 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Republic. By May 1918, the union of the three peoples broke up 
into three independent republics. Armenian independence lasted 
only until November 1920, when, with the help of the Red Army, 
the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed. In March 
1922, the republic joined again with Georgia and Azerbaydzhan 
to form the Transcaucasian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, 
which — together with the Russian, Belorussian, and Ukrainian 
republics — joined to form the Soviet Union in December of that 
year. In December 1936, the Soviet government broke the federa- 
tion into three separate union republics. 

In the 1920s, the Soviet regime gave Armenians the same op- 
portunity as it gave other nationalities to revitalize their culture 
and language. The onset of Stalin's rule at the end of the 1920s, 
however, brought dramatic changes. Together with forced collec- 
tivization of agriculture and rapid industrial development, the Soviet 
regime tightened political controls over the Armenian people and 
applied to them, as to others, its policy of Russification. 

Two-thirds of the more than 4.6 million Armenians living in the 
Soviet Union resided in the Armenian Republic, the smallest and 
least populous of the three Caucasian republics. The Armenian 
Republic was the most ethnically homogeneous of all the Soviet 
republics. Over 93 percent of the population of the Armenian Repub- 
lic in 1989 were Armenians. Only the Azerbaydzhanis formed a sub- 
stantial national minority in Armenia. No other republic, however, 
had such a large percentage of its nationals living outside its borders. 
Large numbers of Armenians lived in the Azerbaydzhan, Georgian, 
and Russian republics. 

Armenians speak a unique Indo-European language, which uses 
an equally unique alphabet. The vast majority of the Armenians 
living in the Soviet Union and over 99 percent of the Armenians 
in the Armenian Republic regarded Armenian as their first 
language. 

The citizens of the Armenian Republic rank among the most 
highly educated people in the Soviet Union. In the 1970s, the repub- 
lic ranked second among the republics in the number of individ- 
uals with higher and secondary education per thousand people. 
Armenians also ranked second among Soviet nationalities in the 
number of scientific workers per thousand people. 

Armenians were the third most urbanized nationality in 1970s. 
Some 68 percent of the Armenian Republic's population resided 
in towns and cities. The major city in the Armenian Republic was 
Yerevan, the capital, with nearly 1.2 million people in 1989. Two 
other cities, Leninakan and Kirovakan, had populations of more 
than 100,000. 



154 



Nationalities and Religions 



Armenian representation in the CPSU has been quite high rela- 
tive to their share of the Soviet population. Armenians also domi- 
nated in the party apparatus of the Armenian Republic. 

Georgians 

Georgians possess perhaps the oldest culture among the major 
nationalities of the Soviet Union. The ancestral Georgian tribes 
appeared in the Caucasus probably during the second millennium 
B.C. These tribes began to unite into larger political entities in 
the first millennium B.C., and by the sixth century B.C. the first 
Georgian kingdom was established. From the first century A.D. 
until the early twelfth century, Georgians endured a succession of 
conquests by the Romans, Iranians, Arabs, and Seljuk Turks. After 
each conquest, Georgians were able to regain their independence, 
reaching a golden age during the late twelfth and early thirteenth 
centuries, when Georgian power extended to include other parts 
of the Caucasus. Between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, 
Georgia was invaded first by Chinggis Khan's and then by Tamer- 
lane's hordes. The destruction wrought by these invasions and in- 
ternal feuding between the Georgian rulers and their vassals led 
to the disintegration of Georgia at the end of the fifteenth century. 
Beginning in the sixteenth century, the Georgians faced two new 
powerful foes, Turkey and Iran. Unable to resist the threat of either, 
the Georgians sought the aid of their Russian neighbors and in 
1783 signed a treaty of friendship with imperial Russia, which 
guaranteed Georgia's independence and territorial integrity. By 
the beginning of the nineteenth century, however, Russia began 
the process of annexation of Georgian lands, which was completed 
in the second half of the nineteenth century. 

The nineteenth-century nationalist reawakening that swept the 
Russian Empire and aroused its nationalities had a much stronger 
socialist content in Georgia than in any other non-Russian part 
of the empire. From the beginning, it was closely identified with 
Marxism (see Glossary), particularly the Menshevik (see Glossary) 
branch of Russian Marxism. In 1918 Georgian Mensheviks, who 
were in control of the revolutionary ferment in Georgia, declared 
Georgian independence. In 1921 the Red Army invaded Georgia 
in support of a Bolshevik coup there and established it as a Soviet 
republic; in December 1922 the Georgian Republic entered the 
union of Soviet republics as part of the Transcaucasian Soviet Fed- 
erated Socialist Republic. The Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic 
was established as a union republic of the Soviet Union in 1936. 

According to the 1989 census, Georgians numbered almost 4 
million, and 95 percent of them lived in the Georgian Republic. 



155 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Only the Baltic nationalities were as concentrated in their own 
republics. Within its borders were also two autonomous republics, 
the Abkhazian Autonomous Republic and the Adzhar Autonomous 
Republic, and one autonomous oblast, the South Ossetian Autono- 
mous Oblast. 

In 1989 over 5.4 million people lived in this densely populated 
republic, of whom about 69 percent were Georgians. Armenians, 
Russians, and Azerbaydzhanis were the largest national minori- 
ties in the republic. Since 1970 the number of Russians in the repub- 
lic has steadily decreased. 

Georgians speak an Ibero-Caucasian language that belongs to 
the Caucasian group of languages. Like the Armenian language, 
the Georgian language has a distinct alphabet. The overwhelming 
majority of Georgians living in the Soviet Union and 99.7 percent 
of Georgians in their own republic considered Georgian their na- 
tive tongue in 1989. 

Georgians constitute one of the most highly educated nationali- 
ties in the Soviet Union. In 1971 Jews were the only nationality 
having a greater percentage of students in higher education insti- 
tutions, and Georgians had the third highest number of scientific 
workers relative to their share of the population. Yet the Georgian 
Republic was one of the least urbanized. In 1987 only 55 percent 
of Georgian residents lived in towns and cities, and as of 1970 only 
44 percent of all Georgians in the Soviet Union lived in urban areas. 
Among the major cities in the Georgian Republic were Tbilisi, the 
capital with 1.3 million people, and Kutaisi with 230,000; three 
other cities had populations over 100,000. 

Traditionally, Georgians have been very active participants in the 
CPSU. In 1983 Georgians ranked first, ahead of the Russians, in 
the size of party membership relative to their share of the total popu- 
lation. The most famous Georgian CPSU member was Joseph V. 
Stalin, whose surname was Dzhugashvili. Other prominent Geor- 
gians were the Bolshevik leader Sergo Ordzhonikidze and the 
longtime chief of the secret police, Lavrenty Beria. Eduard A. 
Shevardnadze, a full member of the Politburo and minister of for- 
eign affairs in the 1980s, was also a Georgian. 

Azerbaydzhanis 

The early inhabitants of the present-day Azerbaydzhan Repub- 
lic were a mix of different people, as the country had endured many 
invasions since the sixth century B.C. Until the ninth century A.D., 
however, the Iranians were dominant. The large migration of 
Turkic tribes into the area between the tenth and twelfth centu- 
ries, and their subsequent mixing with the indigenous population, 



156 



Residents of Tbilisi reading declarations at a "democracy 
wall" near the center of the Georgian capital 
Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 

led to the formation of the Azerbaydzhan people. With time, the 
Turkic element became culturally dominant except in religion. Un- 
like most Turkic Muslims, who were Sunni, most Azerbaydzhanis 
became Shia Muslims akin to the Muslims of Iran. From the eleventh 
to the early nineteenth century, Azerbaydzhan was almost continu- 
ously under Iranian control. In 1724 Peter the Great annexed the 
Baku and Derbent regions of Azerbaydzhan, but Iran regained them 
a dozen years later. Russian presence became permanent in the first 
half of the nineteenth century, when Azerbaydzhan was divided be- 
tween Iran and Russia. 

At first, Russian control of Azerbaydzhan had little effect on the 
life of the people. In fact, the rise of Azerbaydzhan national con- 
sciousness in the late nineteenth century was influenced more by 
the changes within Turkey and Iran than by the political and so- 
cial events in imperial Russia. Rapid development of the oil in- 
dustry, the growth of such industrial centers as Baku, and the influx 
of Slavs into Azerbaydzhan at the turn of the century, however, 
drew Azerbaydzhanis closer to Russia. A secularized elite, modeled 
on the Young Turks, came into being. It soon split between a rela- 
tively urban Marxist faction and an Islamic faction closely tied to 
the rural areas of Azerbaydzhan. In 1918 the more rightist, Islamic 



157 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

faction formed an independent republic with the help of the Turkish 
army. The short-lived independence of the Azerbaydzhanis came 
to an end in 1920 when the Red Army invaded and established 
a communist regime, which helped turn Azerbaydzhan into a Soviet 
republic. 

Although Soviet rule was accompanied by repressive measures, 
tight political control, and collectivization, the Azerbaydzhan 
Republic grew industrially and economically. Another result of 
Soviet rule was the dramatic rise in literacy. In 1927 only 31.9 per- 
cent of the deputies in the Baku soviet were literate. By 1959 some 
97 percent of the entire population of the Azerbaydzhan Republic 
was literate, according to Soviet statistics. 

The most populous of the three major nationalities in the Cau- 
casus region, the Azerbaydzhanis have important characteristics 
that distinguish them from the other two nationalities. Being Mus- 
lim and of Turkic origin, they differ ethnically and culturally from 
the Armenians and Georgians. Also, they are separated by a long 
international border from fellow Azerbaydzhanis in Iran with whom 
they share their origins, culture, language, and religion. Occupy- 
ing the southernmost part of the European Soviet Union, the 
Azerbaydzhan Republic includes the Nakhichevan' Autonomous 
Republic, which is separated from the rest of the Azerbaydzhan 
Republic by the Armenian Republic, and the Nagorno-Karabakh 
Autonomous Oblast, which is populated mostly by Armenians. 

Like other Muslim groups in the Soviet Union, the Azerbay- 
dzhanis have demonstrated a remarkable population growth since 
the 1950s. In 1989 the Azerbaydzhanis numbered almost 6.8 mil- 
lion. Some 5.8 million of them lived in the Azerbaydzhan Repub- 
lic, where they made up 83 percent of the population. The largest 
national minorities within the borders of the Azerbaydzhan Repub- 
lic were Russians and Armenians, who together made up about 
11 percent of the population. About 37 percent of the Armenians 
in Azerbaydzhan resided in the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous 
Oblast, where they constituted 77 percent of the population. The 
number of Russians living in the Azerbaydzhan Republic in 1989 
was slightly larger than the number of Armenians. 

Azerbaydzhanis speak a Turkic language that belongs to the 
southern branch of Altaic languages. Originally the language de- 
veloped from a mixture of languages spoken by the Iranian and 
Turkic tribes living there. It became a literary language late in the 
nineteenth century when the Azerbaydzhan intelligentsia popula- 
rized literature written in their native language. In 1922 Soviet 
officials replaced the original Arabic alphabet, first with the Latin 
alphabet and then in 1937 with the Cyrillic alphabet. According 



158 



Nationalities and Religions 



to the 1989 census, about 97.6 percent of the Azerbaydzhanis in 
the Soviet Union regarded the Azerbaydzhan language as their na- 
tive tongue. 

In 1987 the Azerbaydzhan Republic was among the least ur- 
banized republics, with only 54 percent of its population living in 
urban areas. Large cities included the capital, Baku, with a popu- 
lation of over 1.1 million, Kirovabad with 270,000, and Sumgait 
with 234,000. 

The level of Azerbaydzhan education was high. Azerbaydzhanis 
ranked fifth among the nationalities in the number of students in 
institutions of higher education per thousand people, but they 
ranked eighth in their share of scientific workers. In 1979 Azer- 
baydzhanis were seventh in CPSU membership. 

Other Nationalities of the Caucasus 

In addition to the three major nationalities in the Caucasus 
region, about two dozen other nationalities and numerous sub- 
groups resided there. Most of these nationalities lived in the 
Dagestan Autonomous Republic located northeast of the Cauca- 
sus Mountains in the Russian Republic. In 1989 the more than 
2 million people of the Dagestan Autonomous Republic were among 
the most diverse populations, ethnically and linguistically, in the 
world. The nationalities ranged in size from almost half a million 
Avars to barely 12,000 Aguls and even smaller groups. The great 
majority of the Dagestan people were Sunni Muslims; but small 
numbers of Shia Muslims, Christians, and Jews were also present. 

Central Asian Nationalities 

Soviet Central Asia, a vast area of over 3.9 million square kilom- 
eters, is made up of the Kazakh, Kirgiz, Turkmen, Uzbek, and 
Tadzhik republics. In 1989 some 49 million people, or over 17 per- 
cent of the population of the Soviet Union, lived there. About 37 
million people, or over 75 percent of the population of Soviet Central 
Asia, belonged to nationalities that were traditionally Islamic. In 
the 1980s, they, like Muslims in other parts of the Soviet Union, 
have been very resistant to the process of Russification. In 1989 
some 98 percent of Soviet Central Asian Muslims spoke primarily 
their own languages, and their fluency in Russian was low in com- 
parison with other Soviet nationalities. 

The five nationalities of Soviet Central Asia shared a number 
of common characteristics. They had similar ethnic origins, ex- 
perienced similar historical development, and, most important, were 
all part of an Islamic society. But regional and cultural differences 
were also present, especially between the Tadzhiks, who speak an 



159 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Iranian language, and the rest, who speak Turkic languages with 
various degrees of commonality. The life-styles of the five peoples 
also differed, from the Tadzhiks, who have an ancient urban tra- 
dition, to the Kazakhs, some of whom were still nomadic as late 
as the 1920s. 

Uzbeks 

The history of the Uzbeks and their homeland is closely tied to 
that of Turkestan, an ancient territory stretching from the Caspian 
Sea in the west and extending into China and Afghanistan in the 
east, encompassing most of the areas of the present-day Turkmen, 
Uzbek, Tadzhik, and Kirgiz republics and the southern portion 
of the Kazakh Republic. In the centuries before the birth of Christ, 
Turkestan was populated by people of Persian stock, and they 
endured successive waves of invaders. In the sixth century B.C., 
Turkestan for the most part belonged to the Persian Achaemenid 
Empire. Alexander the Great invaded Turkestan in the fourth cen- 
tury B.C. , and the Huns overran the area in the fifth century A.D. 
Arabs conquered Turkestan in the seventh century A.D. and intro- 
duced the Islamic religion and culture. Another series of invasions 
by predominantly Turkic peoples began at the end of the tenth cen- 
tury and continued into the thirteenth century when the great Mon- 
gol invasion swept the area. The Mongol invaders were soon 
assimilated by the Turkic population and adopted their language, 
culture, and religion. 

In the beginning of the sixteenth century, Turkestan was con- 
quered by yet another wave of Turkic nomads, the Uzbeks. The 
Uzbeks, whose name derives from Uzbek Khan, the ruler of the 
Golden Horde (see Glossary) at the beginning of the fourteenth 
century, were a mixture of Turkic tribes within the Mongol Em- 
pire. The center of the Uzbek state became the city of Bukhara. 
Subsequendy, the independent Uzbek khanates of Khiva and 
Kokand evolved. The khanates of Bukhara, Khiva, and Kokand 
inherited aspects of the Iranian, Turkic, and Arabic civilizations. 
Their populations were mostly Uzbek, but within their borders also 
lived considerable numbers of Tadzhiks, Turkmens, and Kirgiz. 
By the eighteenth century, the khans of Khiva, Bukhara, and 
Kokand had extended their control over the innumerable indepen- 
dent tribal kingdoms and ruled central Turkestan. But the process 
of consolidation was not complete, and many peripheral areas in 
Turkestan remained almost totally independent of or in rebellion 
against one or another of the three khanates. In the vast steppes 
and deserts in the north, the Kazakhs grazed their herds as they 
always had; the nomadic Turkmens roamed the wide stretches of 



160 



Kalyan Minaret (completed in 1127) and Kalyan Mosque (completed 
in 1514) in the old section of Bukhara, Uzbek Republic 

Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 

pastureland to the west; the rebellious Kirgiz made their home in 
the mountainous valleys in the east; and the Iranian- speaking 
Tadzhiks maintained their traditional life-style in the southeast, 
in the highlands north of the Hindu Kush. 

Although Peter the Great attempted the first Russian invasion 
of Turkestan in the beginning of the eighteenth century, systematic 
Russian penetration of Turkestan was undertaken only in the mid- 
nineteenth century. By the end of the nineteenth century, the 
khanates of Bukhara and Khiva, greatly reduced in size, had be- 
come vassal states of the Russian Empire. The rest of the territory 
and the entire territory of Kokand was incorporated into Russian 
Turkestan, created in 1867, which was divided into five provinces 
and presided over by a Russian governor general. Turkestan, 
together with the four provinces of Kazakhstan (see Glossary), con- 
stituted what came to be known as Russian Central Asia (subse- 
quently Soviet Central Asia). In spite of tsarist toleration of the 
Muslim religion and customs, Russian conquest of Turkestan had 
an immediate impact on aspects of the indigenous culture and so- 
ciety. Early in the twentieth century, economic development came 
to Turkestan, new towns sprang up, cotton grew where once 
nomads grazed their herds, and railroads linked Turkestan with 



161 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

markets in Russia. The nomadic Kirgiz, Kazakhs, and Turkmens 
were especially resentful of the evolving changes. In 1916, when 
the Russian government ended its exemption of Muslims from mili- 
tary service, much of Russian Central Asia rose in a general revolt 
against Russian rule. 

In November 1917, the Bolsheviks established Soviet power in 
the city of Tashkent. In April 1918, they proclaimed the Turkestan 
Autonomous Republic. The great mass of the Muslim population, 
however, took no part in these events. Only after the Bolsheviks 
attacked the Muslim religion, intervened directly in native society 
and culture, and engaged in armed seizure of food did the in- 
digenous population offer fierce resistance in a national and holy 
war against the Soviet regime, known as the Basmachi Rebellion 
(see Glossary). 

The autonomous soviet republics of Khorzem (formerly Khiva) 
and Bukhara were established in 1920 and incorporated into the 
Soviet Union. In 1924 and 1925, the entire Soviet Central Asian 
territory was reorganized by an act known as the national delimi- 
tation process in Central Asia. The Turkestan Autonomous Repub- 
lic was abolished and divided along ethnic and linguistic lines into 
the Uzbek and Turkmen union republics, the Tadzhik Autono- 
mous Republic within the Uzbek Republic, and the Kirgiz Au- 
tonomous Republic and the Karakalpak Autonomous Oblast within 
the Russian Republic. At the same time, the Kazakh Autonomous 
Republic within the Russian Republic was also established. The 
Tadzhik Autonomous Republic became a union republic in 1929, 
and the Kirgiz Autonomous Republic became a union republic in 
1936. The Karakalpak Autonomous Oblast became an autonomous 
republic in 1932 and was transferred to the Uzbek Republic in 1936. 
The same year, the Kazakh Autonomous Republic was transformed 
into a union republic. 

In the 1980s, the Uzbeks were the most populous nationality in 
Soviet Central Asia. Of the nearly 16.7 million Uzbeks in the Soviet 
Union in 1989, most of them lived in the Uzbek Republic, which 
lies in the middle of Soviet Central Asia. Most of the remaining 
Uzbeks lived in the other four Central Asian republics. In the 1989 
census, the population of the Uzbek Republic was slightiy over 19.9 
million, with Uzbeks making up almost 71 percent. The largest 
minority in the Uzbek Republic in 1989 was the Russians with over 
1 .6 million, or 8.3 percent of the total population, followed by the 
Tadzhiks (932,000), Kazakhs (808,000), and Tatars (468,000). In 
addition, there were 411,000 Karakalpaks, most of whom lived 
in the Karakalpak Autonomous Republic in the Uzbek Republic. 
The Karakalpaks constituted only 3 1 percent of their autonomous 



162 



Nationalities and Religions 



republic's total population and were the second largest national- 
ity, after the Uzbeks. 

Uzbek, the language of the Uzbeks, belongs to the Turkic family 
of languages and has both a variety of dialects and a mixed vocabu- 
lary of Arabic, Persian, and Russian loanwords. The original Arabic 
alphabet was replaced in the 1920s by the Soviet government with 
an alphabet based on Latin script and subsequentiy with an alphabet 
based on Cyrillic script. In 1989 about 98.3 percent of the Uzbeks 
regarded Uzbek as their first language. 

Uzbeks were among the least urbanized people in the Soviet 
Union. In 1979 only about 25 percent of all Uzbeks lived in cities. 
Nevertheless, Tashkent, the capital of the Uzbek Republic, had 
a population of nearly 2.1 million people in 1989, and five other 
cities had populations over 200,000. The populations of these cities 
had a disproportionately high number of Russians and other non- 
Uzbeks, however. 

Uzbeks were the third largest nationality in the Soviet Union 
but in 1971 ranked tenth in the number of students in institutions 
of higher education and fifteenth in the number of scientific work- 
ers per thousand. Uzbeks were also very underrepresented in the 
CPSU. In the early 1980s, Uzbeks ranked twelfth among Soviet 
nationalities in party membership. Although they made up about 
4.8 percent of the total population of the Soviet Union in 1979, 
they held only 1.5 percent of the seats on the CPSU Central Com- 
mittee. Uzbek membership in the Uzbek Republic's party organi- 
zation was also below their share of the republic's population. 
Russians, in contrast, made up only about 8.3 percent of the popu- 
lation of the republic but held 21 percent of party membership. 
Russians also had a majority in the Central Committee of the CPSU 
in the Uzbek Republic and tended to occupy top party positions. 

Kazakhs 

The origins of the Kazakh people and their name itself are mat- 
ters of historical debate. First emerging as an identifiable group 
in the fifteenth century, they were a mix of indigenous Turkic tribes, 
which had been in the area since the eighth century, and nomadic 
Mongols, who invaded the area in the thirteenth century. Origi- 
nally they differed little from their Turkic neighbors — the Uzbeks, 
the Kirgiz, and the Karakalpaks — but political divisions and differ- 
ent economic development caused them to enter the nineteenth cen- 
tury as distinctly different from the other three peoples. 

Russians had limited and intermittent contacts with the Kazakhs 
between the mid-sixteenth century and the beginning of the eigh- 
teenth century, when Russia began to exert control over them. 



163 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Harassed by their neighbors, particularly the Kalmyks, in 1731 the 
nomadic Kazakhs placed themselves under the protection of the much 
more powerful Russian state. Afterward, Russian penetration into 
Kazakhstan was unremitting and included building a network of 
forts and settling the land with Russian peasants. Despite a series 
of Kazakh rebellions against them, Russian expansion continued, 
and by the second half of the nineteenth century Kazakhstan was 
firmly under Russian control. The tsarist policy of ending Kazakh 
nomadism and of setding the land with Russians, Ukrainians, Ger- 
mans, and Jews continued. The new settlers received huge portions 
of the most fertile land. An almost exclusively non-Kazakh class of 
workers began to appear, and a budding industry, operated by the 
new immigrants, began to grow. These developments threatened 
to destroy the traditional form of existence of the Kazakh pastoral 
nomads. 

The indigenous population's resentment against the settlers, as 
well as against conscription of Muslims into the military, erupted 
as a major rebellion in 1916 and, although quickly suppressed, set 
the stage for the nationalist movement in Kazakhstan following the 
February Revolution of 1917. Kazakh nationalists established a 
national government and engaged in an armed struggle against 
both pro- and anti-Bolshevik Russian forces. By mid- 19 19, however, 
weakened by the struggle, Kazakh nationalists sought accommo- 
dation with the Bolsheviks. In August 1920, the Kirgiz Autono- 
mous Republic was established for the Kazakhs (until the mid- 1920s 
Soviet officials called them Kirgiz) within the Russian Republic. 
In 1925 it was renamed the Kazakh Autonomous Republic and 
became a union republic in 1936. 

The Bolshevik Revolution and the Civil War that followed fur- 
ther disrupted the traditional life of the Kazakhs. Many Kazakhs 
left with their herds for China and Afghanistan. Almost a million 
died from starvation in the famine of 1921-22. The rest were soon 
faced with forced collectivization, and a continuous influx of Rus- 
sians and other people gradually reduced the Kazakhs to a minority 
in their own land. Kazakh leaders, even Kazakh communists, who 
protested these policies were purged or executed, first in the late 
1920s and then during the purges of the Great Terror in the 1930s. 

In 1989 the 8.1 million Kazakhs constituted the fifth most 
populous nationality in the Soviet Union. Over 6.5 million, or 80 
percent of the Kazakhs, lived in the Kazakh Republic, by far the 
largest of the five Soviet Central Asian republics. In fact, after the 
Russian Republic, it was the second largest republic and had a ter- 
ritory of over 2.7 million square kilometers. It was also the least 
homogeneous of all the union republics. No nationality constituted 



164 




165 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

a majority of the 16.5 million people in the Kazakh Republic. The 
Kazakhs, with nearly 40 percent of the population, were the most 
numerous nationality. Russians, with about 38 percent, were the 
second most populous nationality in the Kazakh Republic. From 
1959 to 1989, however, the Kazakhs have shown a steady increase 
in their share of the republic's population. Simultaneously, the per- 
centage of Russians in the total population has declined. Ukrainians 
and Germans, the next two largest national minorities, whose in- 
dividual shares made up about 5 percent and 6 percent of the popu- 
lation, respectively, also declined from 1959 to 1989. More than 
1.5 million Kazakhs lived in other parts of the Soviet Union, with 
the largest concentrations in the Uzbek and Russian republics. 

The language of the Kazakhs belongs to the same family of Turkic 
languages as the languages of the Kirgiz, the Uzbeks, and the Turk- 
mens. Kazakh, a unique language with Arabic and Tatar elements, 
became a literary language in the 1860s. Until 1926, Kazakh had 
an Arabic script; from 1926 until 1940, it had a Latin alphabet; 
and since 1940, it has had a Cyrillic alphabet. In spite of the sig- 
nificant numbers of Russians and other nationalities in the repub- 
lic, the Kazakhs have retained very high usage of their own 
language. In 1989 about 98 percent of the Kazakhs living in the 
republic regarded Kazakh as their native tongue. Of the non- 
Kazakh residents of the Kazakh Republic, only 1 percent could 
converse fluently in the Kazakh language. 

In 1987 the great majority of the Kazakhs lived in rural areas. 
Nevertheless, because of the large numbers of urban Russians and 
other nationalities, 58 percent of the Kazakh Republic's popula- 
tion was urban. Many large cities were scattered throughout the 
republic. The capital city of Alma-Ata, for example, had a popu- 
lation of over 1.1 million in 1989. Other large cities included 
Karaganda (about 650,000) and five others having populations over 
300,000. 

In the 1980s, the Kazakh Republic ranked ninth among the 
fifteen union republics in the educational level of its residents. But 
the educational achievements of Russians residing in the republic 
were considerably higher than those of the indigenous Kazakhs. 
In 1970 forty- two Russians for every thirty-one Kazakhs studied 
in institutions of higher learning; and in special secondary schools 
the ratio was eighty-six Russians to thirty-six Kazakhs. Kazakhs 
ranked sixth among all nationalities in the number of students in 
higher education institutions and thirteenth in the number of scien- 
tific workers per thousand. 

Between 1969 and 1989, Kazakh membership in the CPSU was 
considerably below their share of the country's population. In the 



166 



Nationalities and Religions 



Kazakh Republic, however, their membership in the party was 
somewhat higher than their share of the republic's population. 
Kazakhs also held a relatively high percentage of the leadership 
positions in the republic's party organization, with Russians or other 
Slavs generally acting as their deputies. Kazakh representation in 
the CPSU Central Committee nearly equaled their share of the 
population in the Soviet Union. 

Kirgiz 

The term Kirgiz was first used in the eighth century in reference 
to the tribes occupying the upper reaches of the Yenisey River. 
Historians disagree on the early history of the Kirgiz; but in the 
tenth century they apparently began migrating south searching for 
new pastures or driven by other people — particularly the Mongols 
in the thirteenth century — until they settled in the present-day 
Kirgiz Republic. By the early sixteenth century, they were the area's 
predominant people. Between the sixteenth and the nineteenth cen- 
turies, the Kirgiz people alternated between periods of tribal in- 
dependence and foreign conquest. They were overrun by the 
Kalmyks late in the seventeenth century, the Manchus in the mid- 
eighteenth century, and the Kokand Khanate in the first half of 
the nineteenth century. 

Russian conquest of the Kirgiz began in the mid-nineteenth cen- 
tury, and by 1876 they were absorbed into the Russian Empire. 
Kirgizia became a major area of Russian colonization, with Rus- 
sians and other Slavs given the best land to settle, reducing con- 
siderably the grazing lands used by the Kirgiz nomads. Kirgiz 
resentment against Russian colonization policies and conscription 
for noncombatant duties in the army led to a major revolt through- 
out Russia's Central Asian territory, including Kirgizia. Casual- 
ties were high on both sides, and thousands of Kirgiz fled with their 
flocks to Afghanistan and China. 

The tsarist government did not recognize the Kirgiz as a separate 
national entity or political unit. Kirgizia, along with other Turkic 
nations of Central Asia, was included in Russian Turkestan, created 
in 1867. At first the Bolshevik attitude toward the Kirgiz was equally 
unenlightened. Having defeated the nationalists, the White armies 
(see Glossary), and foreign interventionists in Kirgizia by 1919, 
the Bolsheviks included it in the newly established Turkestan Auton- 
omous Republic. In 1924 the Kara-Kirgiz Autonomous Oblast was 
created (called Kara-Kirgiz to distinguish it from the Kazakh Auton- 
omous Republic, which was named the Kirgiz Autonomous Repub- 
lic). In 1925 it was renamed the Kirgiz Autonomous Oblast and 



167 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

in 1926 the Kirgiz Autonomous Republic. In 1936 it became a 
union republic. 

In the first years of their rule, Soviet authorities continued the 
colonization policies of the tsarist regime. The Soviet government 
mitigated its policy, however, after the Basmachi Rebellion, a popu- 
lar Turkic nationalist movement that swept former Turkestan from 
1918 to 1924 and recurred periodically until 1931 . In the mid-1920s, 
the Soviet government permitted traditional Kirgiz culture to flour- 
ish. It also promoted the creation of native leadership and slowed 
the influx of Slavs into the region. In the late 1920s and through- 
out the 1930s, these policies were replaced by Stalin's program of 
forced denomadization and collectivization and replacement of the 
Kirgiz intelligentsia and leadership with an ideologically accept- 
able Stalinist elite. Some Kirgiz protested by slaughtering their herds 
or driving them into China. Nevertheless, by 1933 about 67 per- 
cent of the nomads were collectivized. The Kirgiz intelligentsia was 
decimated. Many Kirgiz members of the CPSU in the republic 
were purged. Despite the turmoil, the Kirgiz subsequendy achieved 
some industrialization, a higher standard of living, and substan- 
tial achievements in education. 

According to the 1989 census, slightly more than 2.5 million 
Kirgiz lived in the Soviet Union, 88 percent of them in the Kirgiz 
Republic. About 175,000 Kirgiz also resided in the Uzbek Republic. 

According to the 1989 census, the Kirgiz, with 52 percent of the 
population, for the first time in decades constituted a majority within 
their own republic. Russians, with almost 22 percent of the popu- 
lation, were second. Other large minorities included the Uzbeks, 
Ukrainians, Germans, and Tatars. Like other Muslim groups in 
the Soviet Union, the Kirgiz showed a phenomenal population 
growth between 1959 and 1979. While the population of the Soviet 
Union grew by 15.8 percent between 1959 and 1970, the Kirgiz 
increased by 49.8 percent. As a result, the proportion of the Kirgiz 
in the republic has been steadily increasing, while the Russian share 
of the population has been declining despite their continuous im- 
migration into the republic. 

The Kirgiz language, which belongs to the Turkic group of lan- 
guages prevalent in Soviet Central Asia, has three regional dialects. 
A Kirgiz literary language was not fully developed until the Soviet 
period. It merges all three dialects and incorporates Iranian, Arabic, 
and Russian elements. Like other Turkic languages of Soviet Cen- 
tral Asia, the Kirgiz language first used an Arabic script, which 
later was replaced by a Latin script in 1928 and finally by a Cyrillic 
one in the early 1940s. According to the 1989 census, Kirgiz was 
spoken as a native language by about 97.8 percent of all Kirgiz 



168 



Nationalities and Religions 



in the Soviet Union and 99.5 percent of those living in the Kirgiz 
Republic. 

The Kirgiz were the least urbanized major nationality in the 
Soviet Union. During the 1970s, only 14.5 percent of the Kirgiz 
lived in urban areas. In the Kirgiz Republic, they constituted less 
than one-fifth of the republic's urban population. Russians resid- 
ing in the republic were the most urbanized segment of the popu- 
lation, with over half of them living in towns and cities. In 1989 
the Kirgiz Republic was the second least urbanized republic in the 
Soviet Union, with 40 percent of its population residing in urban 
areas. Frunze, the capital and largest city, had a population of 
616,000, and Osh had over 200,000; but only one other city had 
a population of more than 50,000. 

In the 1970s, the Kirgiz were eighth among the seventeen major 
nationalities in number of students attending institutions of higher 
education and fourteenth in the number of scientific workers per 
thousand. In 1987 the Kirgiz Republic ranked eleventh among the 
fifteen union republics in number of individuals with higher or 
secondary education per thousand residents. 

In the 1980s, the Kirgiz ranked eleventh in CPSU membership 
corresponding to their share of the population. The Kirgiz Republic 
ranked twelfth among Soviet republics in the percentage of its 
citizens belonging to the CPSU, but Russians residing in the repub- 
lic were clearly overrepresented. 

Tadzhiks 

Unlike the other nationalities of Soviet Central Asia who are eth- 
nically Turkic, the Tadzhiks trace their origins primarily to the 
Persians who settled the area as early as the sixth century B.C. 
and were part of the Persian Achaemenid Empire. From the seventh 
century A.D. until the fourteenth century, the Tadziks were over- 
run, as were the other people of Central Asia with whom the 
Tadzhiks developed a common civilization, first by the Arabs and 
then by other invaders. By the fourteenth century, the Tadzhiks 
were distinguished from the other peoples of Central Asia primar- 
ily by their language and the fact that they were sedentary, not 
nomadic like their neighbors. The name Tadzhik is derived from 
a word used to distinguish the Turkic people from Iranian sub- 
jects of the Arab Empire. By the sixteenth century, however, it 
had come to mean a trader from Central Asia or simply a seden- 
tary person. 

Beginning in the fifteenth century, the Tadzhiks were under 
Uzbek rule, and by the eighteenth century most of Tadzhik terri- 
tory was under the khanate of Bukhara. The Afghan conquest of 



169 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Tadzhik territory from the south began in the mid-eighteenth cen- 
tury, and Russian expansion into Tadzhik lands from the north 
followed a century later. By the end of the nineteenth century, 
northern Tadzhikistan was under Russian rule, southern Tadzhik- 
istan continued under the khanate of Bukhara, and the remaining 
Tadzhik territory was within Afghanistan. 

Russian conquest of Tadzhikistan and subsequent immigration 
of Russian settlers had a minimal effect on traditional Tadzhik 
society. The revolutionary movement in Tadzhikistan was com- 
posed of Russians, not Tadzhiks. Therefore, Soviet power was es- 
tablished in 1918, and, with little resistance, northern Tadzhikistan 
was included in the newly created Turkestan Autonomous Republic. 
Nevertheless, when the Red Army invaded the khanate of Bukhara 
in 1921, it met with fierce resistance from the growing Basmachi 
movement. The movement continued until 1924 when the Tadzhik 
Autonomous Republic was created and incorporated into the Uzbek 
Soviet Socialist Republic. In 1929 the Tadzhik Autonomous Repub- 
lic was made a union republic. 

In 1989 the Tadzhiks numbered about 4.2 million, three-fourths 
of whom lived in the Tadzhik Republic. They were divided into 
the Tadzhiks proper (the Tadzhiks of the plain) and the Pamiris 
(the Tadzhiks of the mountains). Most of the Pamiris lived in the 
Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast, located in the western 
Pamirs in the southeastern Tadzhik Republic. The Soviet census 
of 1989, however, did not distinguish between the two groups. Over 
900,000 Tadzhiks also lived in the Uzbek Republic. In 1989 the 
Tadzhiks made up only about 62 percent of the Tadzhik Repub- 
lic's population. The largest national minority living in the Tadzhik 
Republic was the Uzbeks, followed by the Russians. 

The most distinguishing characteristic of the Tadzhiks is their 
language, which is closely related to Persian and belongs to the 
Southwest Iranian group of languages. The Tadzhik alphabet, like 
the alphabets of Turkic languages, was Arabic until 1930, Latin 
in the next decade, and finally Cyrillic in 1940. Almost 98 percent 
of the Tadzhiks regarded Tadzhik as their native language. 

The Tadzhiks were among the least urbanized of all the nation- 
alities in the Soviet Union. In 1989 about 67 percent of the Tad- 
zhik Republic's population lived outside urban areas, making it 
the least urbanized republic. It was also the only republic to show 
a decline in the percentage of urban population between 1970 and 
1987. The Tadzhik Republic had only two large cities in 1989, the 
capital, Dushanbe (595,000), and Leninabad (165,000). 

The Tadzhiks rated very low in their level of education. Although 
they had officially achieved 99 percent literacy by 1971 , the Tadzhiks 



170 



Nationalities and Religions 



ranked sixteenth among the seventeen major nationalities both in 
the number of students in institutions of higher learning and in 
the number of scientific workers per thousand. 

In 1983 the Tadzhiks were the most underrepresented among 
the nationalities in their share of CPSU members and very under- 
represented in the Central Committee of the party. 

Turkmens 

The Orguz Turks, forebears of the Soviet Turkmens, migrated 
into the territory of the present-day Turkmen Republic at the end 
of the tenth century and beginning of the eleventh century. Com- 
posed of many tribes, they began their migration from eastern Asia 
in the seventh century and moved slowly toward the Middle East 
and Central Asia. By the twelfth century, they had become the 
dominant group in the present-day Turkmen Republic, assimilat- 
ing the original Iranian population as well as other invaders who 
preceded them into the area. By the end of the fourteenth century, 
the Orguz tribes had developed a common language and traditions, 
and by the fifteenth century they were recognizable as a single peo- 
ple. Although they often became subjects of a neighboring state, 
their military skills and pastoral culture enabled them to enjoy an 
independent existence. Forced into a cooperative and defensive al- 
liance first by the Mongol invasion and then by the Uzbek con- 
quest, the Turkmens nevertheless retained their strong tribal 
divisions and failed to establish a lasting state of their own. 

The Turkmens opposed Russian expansion into Central Asia 
more vigorously than other nationalities. They defeated a Russian 
force in 1717, when Peter the Great first attempted the conquest 
of Central Asia. And, in the nineteenth century, when the Russians 
resumed their expansion into the area, Turkmen cavalry posed de- 
termined and prolonged opposition. The conquest of Turkmenia 
(also known as Turkmenistan) was not completed until 1885, and 
the territorial boundary of Russian Turkmenia was not set until 
a decade later by an Anglo-Russian border treaty. That treaty sepa- 
rated the Turkmens of Russia from the roughly equal number of 
their brethren in present-day Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Turkey. 

Turkmenia became part of Russian Turkestan and was treated 
by the tsarist government as a colonial territory where Russians 
and other Slavs were encouraged to settle. A railroad was built, 
and other features of modernity were introduced. Turkmens re- 
sented losing their grazing land and in 1916 joined a Muslim up- 
rising throughout Russia's Central Asian territory. 

After the February Revolution of 1917, several political forces 
competed for power in Turkmenia. The Turkmens were divided 



171 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

between Islamic traditionalists and the more progressive nation- 
alist intelligentsia. At this time, both Bolshevik and White armies 
sought the loyalty of Turkmenia's Russian population. A provi- 
sional government, established by Turkmen nationalists with sup- 
port of the White forces and limited British assistance, was able 
to maintain itself against the Bolsheviks until mid- 19 19. There- 
after, Turkmen resistance against the Bolsheviks was part of the 
general Basmachi Rebellion, which reemerged sporadically until 
1931. By 1920, however, the Red Army controlled the territory, 
and in 1924 the Turkmen Republic was established in accordance 
with the national delimitation process in Central Asia. 

The Soviet policy of forced collectivization in the late 1920s and 
early 1930s was particularly abhorrent to the nomadic Turkmens. 
It led to enhanced national self-awareness and an opposition move- 
ment, which burst into an open rebellion in 1928-32. In response, 
Soviet authorities arrested scores of native communist leaders and 
broad segments of the Turkmen intelligentsia. Most perished in 
the Great Terror of the 1930s. 

The great majority of the over 2.7 million Soviet Turkmens lived 
in the Turkmen Republic, the least populous of the Soviet Cen- 
tral Asian republics. Turkmens constituted nearly 72 percent of 
the republic's 3.5 million population. Russians and Uzbeks were 
the largest minorities. 

The Turkmen language, which developed from several Turkic 
dialects and has adopted some Arabic, Persian, and Russian loan- 
words, belongs to the southern group of Turkic languages. In the 
1989 census, about 98.5 percent of the Turkmens considered it their 
first language. Only slightly more than 25 percent of the Turk- 
mens had fluency in Russian. 

In 1987 Turkmens were more rural than urban, even though 
the population of the Turkmen Republic, which included a large 
number of highly urban Russians, was almost evenly divided be- 
tween urban and rural residents. The Turkmen Republic had only 
a few large cities in 1989. Ashkhabad, the capital, had a popula- 
tion of 398,000; only Chardzhou and Tashauz also had popula- 
tions over 100,000. 

In 1971 Turkmens were fourteenth among the seventeen major 
nationalities in the number of students in higher education insti- 
tutions and twelfth in the number of scientific workers per thou- 
sand. In 1986 the Turkmen Republic ranked tenth among the union 
republics in the number of students in higher education per thou- 
sand. 

Turkmens were among the least represented nationalities in the 
CPSU. In 1984 they ranked thirteenth among the union republics. 



172 



Man in native costume, 
Ashkhabad, Turkmen Republic 
Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 



Other Major Nationalities 

In addition to the nationalities just described, seven other nation- 
alities numbered over 1 million people in the 1989 census: Molda- 
vians, Tatars, Jews, Germans, Chuvash, Bashkirs, and Mordvins. 
None of these nationalities fit into the preceding groups of nation- 
alities, yet each was a significant part of the complex fabric con- 
stituting the multinational Soviet state, either because of their large 
population or because of some other critical factor. 

Moldavians 

Although Moldavians have their own union republic, the exis- 
tence of Moldavians as a separate nationality has been debatable. 
Soviet authorities consider Moldavians a distinct nationality. But 
most Moldavians see themselves as ethnic Romanians because they 
do not differ from the population of Romania linguistically or cul- 
turally. They believe that the creation of the Moldavian Republic 
and the "artificial" Moldavian nationality was, from its inception, 
an attempt to legitimize Soviet political claims to a portion of Roma- 
nian territory. 

Ancient Moldavia, a territory that included portions of both 
present-day Romania and the Soviet Union's Moldavian Repub- 
lic, was part of Scythia. Later, it fell under partial control of the 
Roman Empire. As the Roman Empire declined, Moldavia was 



173 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

invaded by successive waves of barbarians moving into the em- 
pire. Between the tenth and twelfth centuries, part of Moldavia 
belonged to Kievan Rus' and later to the principality of Galicia. 
Between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, most of Molda- 
via was a vassal state of the Tatars. The first independent Molda- 
vian state arose in the mid-fourteenth century and lasted until the 
beginning of the sixteenth century when Moldavia became a vassal 
state of Turkey. In the late eighteenth century, Russia attempted 
to secure control of Moldavia and finally succeeded in 1812, when 
the portion of Moldavia known as Bessarabia was ceded to Russia. 

Despite tsarist efforts to Russify Bessarabia by setding large num- 
bers of Russians, Ukrainians, and Jews there, at the time of the 
February Revolution of 1917 most of the inhabitants considered 
themselves Romanians. They established the Democratic Molda- 
vian Republic soon after the onset of the revolution and then joined 
with Romania, in April 1918. 

In 1924 Soviet authorities created the Moldavian Autonomous 
Republic for the Romanian- speaking population remaining in the 
Soviet Union. But only about 30 percent of the inhabitants of the 
newly created autonomous republic were "Moldavians," or Roma- 
nian speaking. The majority of the residents of the republic were 
Ukrainians, Jews, or Russians. In 1940 the Soviet Union reincor- 
porated Bessarabia and, together with the territory of the Moldavian 
Autonomous Republic that contained a mostly Romanian-speaking 
population, formed the Moldavian Republic. In 1944 Romania, 
under pressure from the Soviet Union, formally recognized the ex- 
istence of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. According to 
the 1989 census, over 3.3 million Moldavians lived in the Soviet 
Union, of whom 83 percent resided in the Moldavian Republic. The 
republic, the second smallest of the union republics in area, had 
a population of over 4.3 million, of which nearly 2.8 million, or 
over 64 percent, were Moldavians. Ukrainians constituted 14 per- 
cent of the population, while Russians made up another 13 percent. 
Only the Ukrainian and Russian republics had sizable Romanian- 
speaking minorities in their territory. 

According to 1989 statistics, 91.6 percent of Moldavians in the 
Soviet Union considered Moldavian their first language. Spoken 
Moldavian did not differ from the language spoken in Romania; 
however, Soviet authorities replaced the traditional Latin alphabet 
with the Cyrillic alphabet. 

The Moldavians were one of the least urbanized nationalities, 
behind only the Kirgiz as the most rural people in the 1970s. In 
1986 only 47 percent of the Moldavian Republic's population lived 
in urban areas. This represented an increase of 15 percent from 



174 



Nationalities and Religions 



1970, when it was the least urbanized of all the union republics. 
The overwhelming majority of Moldavians lived in rural areas, 
while Russians in the republic resided mostly in the cities. The larg- 
est city in 1989 was the capital, Kishinev, with a population of 
665,000. Two other cities had populations of over 100,000. 

In the 1970s, Moldavians were last among the major nationali- 
ties in the number of students in higher education institutions and 
the number of scientific workers per thousand. The Moldavian 
Republic also consistently ranked last among the union republics 
in the number of students in higher education per thousand. 

Moldavian representation in the CPSU as well as in its own 
republic party organization has been among the lowest of all the 
nationalities. In the 1980s, Moldavians were next to last among 
union republic nationalities in their share of total party member- 
ship. In the republic, Russians and Ukrainians held a dispropor- 
tionate number of seats in the party. Of the nine Moldavian 
Republic's Central Committee members elected in 1971, five were 
Russian, three were Ukrainian, and one was Moldavian. 

Tatars 

Three major Tatar groups reside in the Soviet Union: Volga 
Tatars (the overwhelming majority of all Tatars in the Soviet 
Union), Crimean Tatars, and Siberian Tatars. Most are descended 
from the Turkic- speaking Bui gars who came into the Volga-Ural 
region in the seventh century and the Kipchak tribes who invaded 
the area as part of the Mongol Empire. From the thirteenth to the 
fifteenth century, they were part of the Golden Horde. In the 
fifteenth century, the Golden Horde broke up into the Kazan', 
Astrakhan', Crimean, and Siberian khanates. The Volga Tatars, 
the descendants of the Kazan' and Astrakhan' hordes (see Glos- 
sary), were conquered by Russia in the sixteenth century. The 
Siberian Tatars were incorporated into the Russian Empire later 
that century, and the Crimean Tatars were incorporated at the end 
of the eighteenth century. 

After their conquest by Russia, the Volga Tatars were subjected 
to harsh political, economic, and religious policies. Only the Tatar 
nobles who had intermarried with Russians and, in many instances, 
gained positions of power and influence in the Russian state, es- 
caped persecution. Thousands of Tatars were deported north to 
work in Russian shipyards. Russians confiscated Tatar property, 
destroyed their mosques and religious shrines, and pressured them 
to convert to Christianity. After a series of Tatar revolts in the seven- 
teenth and eighteenth centuries, the tsarist government began to 
change its policies. In 1788 Islam was given official status in Russia, 



175 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

and in 1 792 Tatars were granted the right to trade with the Turkic 
populations of Turkestan, Iran, and China. 

Repressive measures by the Russian government against Cri- 
mean Tatars and Slavic immigration into Crimea forced many 
Tatars to emigrate. Others were forcibly deported. During a cen- 
tury of Russian rule, the Tatar population in Crimea declined from 
about 500,000 at the end of the eighteenth century to fewer than 
200,000 by the end of the nineteenth century. 

Siberian Tatars— mainly hunters, trappers, and horse breeders 
scattered over a large territory — presented no threat to the Russian 
state and for a time continued to live unmolested. In the nineteenth 
century, many Siberian Tatars moved to the cities, seeking em- 
ployment in the newly built sawmills and tanneries. 

Despite renewed harassment in the second half of the nineteenth 
century, Tatars formed the intellectual and political elite of the Mus- 
lim population in Russia. Tatars were active in the Revolution of 
1905 in Russia. They participated in the First Duma of 1906 and 
the Second Duma of 1907, and they were the leading proponents 
of the pan-Turkic movement that emphasized racial, religious and 
linguistic unity of all Turkic- speaking peoples. 

After the February Revolution in 1917, the Volga Tatars tried 
to established an independent federation of Volga-Ural states. This 
dream proved impossible in the face of both Bolshevik and White 
Russian opposition. Instead, with the help of the Red Army, the 
Tatar Autonomous Republic was created in May 1920 as part of 
the Russian Republic. 

The Crimean Tatars' attempts to create an independent state 
in 1917 were also thwarted by the Bolsheviks, and in October 1921 
the Soviet leaders created the Crimean Autonomous Republic. 
Later, however, the Crimean Tatars were exiled from Crimea dur- 
ing World War II and scattered throughout Soviet Central Asia. 

In the 1989 census, the Tatars, with over 6.6 million people, 
were the sixth largest nationality in the Soviet Union. Neverthe- 
less, they did not have their own union republic. Over 1.7 million 
Tatars lived in the Tatar Autonomous Republic, one of sixteen 
autonomous republics in the Russian Republic, where they had 
a plurality of almost 48 percent of the population. About 1 million 
others lived in the Bashkir Autonomous Republic, also located in 
the Russian Republic, where they ranked second in population after 
the Russians and just ahead of the Bashkirs, a closely related Turkic 
nationality. Another 2.6 million Tatars lived scattered through- 
out the rest of the Russian Republic. Of these, about 500,000 were 
Siberian Tatars living in western Siberian towns and villages. Over 
1 million Tatars — a majority of whom were probably exiled 



176 



Synagogue in Kishinev, Moldavian Republic 
Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 

Crimean Tatars — were also found in Soviet Central Asia — mostly 
in the Uzbek and Kazakh republics. 

Each of the three Tatar groups speaks a distinct language, although 
all belong to the West Turkic-Kipchak group of languages. The lan- 
guage of the Crimean Tatars also contains a large number of Arabic 
and Persian loanwords. The Siberian Tatars have no written lan- 
guage of their own and use the literary language of the Volga Tatars. 

In 1989 over 83 percent of all Tatars and 96.6 percent of those 
residing in the Tatar Autonomous Republic regarded Tatar as their 
native language. A high percentage of Tatars were also fluent in 
Russian. The educational level of Tatars in the Soviet Union varied. 
Tatars living in their own autonomous republic or elsewhere in the 
Russian Republic were not as well educated as the highly urbanized 
Crimean Tatars who lived in the Soviet Central Asian republics. 

Tatar representation in the CPSU both in the Soviet Union and 
in the Tatar Autonomous Republic has been consistently low. In 
the 1980s, they were particularly underrepresented in the Central 
Committee of the CPSU. 

Jews 

Jews first appeared in eastern Europe several centuries before 
the birth of Christ. By the first century A.D., Jewish settlements 



177 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

existed along the northern shores of the Black Sea. In the eighth 
century, the descendants of these early Jewish settlers converted 
the nomadic Turkic Khazars to Judaism. Jewish communities 
existed in Kiev and other cities of Kievan Rus'. They were de- 
stroyed, however, during the Mongol invasion in the thirteenth 
century. 

Persecuted in western Europe, Jews began migrating to Poland 
in the fourteenth century, and from there they moved to the present- 
day Lithuanian, Ukrainian, and Belorussian republics, where by 
the mid- seventeenth century they numbered in the hundreds of 
thousands. Although initially they were under royal protection and 
enjoyed communal autonomy, life for the great majority of Jews 
in Poland worsened, and they became as oppressed as Poland's 
Christian subjects. Forbidden to own land, many Jews served as 
estate managers and as middlemen between the Catholic Polish 
landowning nobility and the Orthodox Ukrainian and Belorussian 
enserfed peasants living on the nobles' estates. On the estates, they 
often collected taxes for the nobles, controlled the sale of salt and 
fish, ran the grain mills, and acted as overseers of peasant labor. 
Jews also owned the local village taverns. Particularly insidious was 
the Polish Catholic nobles' practice of making the Jews collect taxes 
on Orthodox churches. As a result, in addition to disliking them 
as foreigners and non-Christians, the peasants held Jews directly 
responsible for their oppressed and miserable lives. These early 
resentments were the seeds of primitive anti-Semitism in eastern 
Europe and later in the Russian Empire. When the Orthodox 
peasantry joined the Ukrainian Cossacks in the mid- seventeenth 
century in a revolt against the Poles and the Catholic Church, thou- 
sands of Jews were also killed. When Russian armies swept into 
Polish- Lithuanian territories following Muscovy's alliance with the 
Ukrainian Cossacks in 1654, they killed additional thousands of 
Jews, forcibly converting some to Christianity and driving others 
into exile. From 100,000 to 500,000 Jews perished, some 700 Jewish 
communities were destroyed, and untold thousands fled the war- 
ravaged areas. 

Although Jews had been expelled from Russia in 1742, the sub- 
sequent incorporation of Polish territory as a result of the parti- 
tions of Poland meant that by the end of the eighteenth century 
Russia had the largest Jewish community in the world. The tsarist 
government prohibited Jews from living anywhere except in the 
area known as the Pale of Settlement, which included the Baltic 
provinces, most of Ukraine and Belorussia, and the northern shore 
of the Black Sea. 



178 



Nationalities and Religions 



About 1.5 million Jews lived in the Russian Empire in the be- 
ginning of the nineteenth century. Confined within the Pale of Set- 
tlement, they were subjected to stringent anti-Jewish regulations. 
Although for the next century restrictions on Jews were periodi- 
cally eased, they were reimposed or even made harsher during the 
frequent periods of reaction that followed. Nicholas I (1825-55) 
promoted forced induction of Jewish youth into military service, 
where they were often coerced into being converted to Christian- 
ity. Jewish rights to lease land and keep taverns were rescinded, 
and the Pale of Setdement was reduced in size. However, the reign 
of Alexander II (1855-81) brought a relaxation of the restrictions 
imposed on the Jewish population: some Jews were permitted to 
settle outside the Pale of Settlement, to attend universities, and 
to enter government service. After the assassination of Alexander 
II, however, the old restrictions were reimposed, and persecu- 
tion of Jews continued until the February Revolution in 1917. 
Government- sanctioned pogroms against Jewish communities, dur- 
ing which Jews were beaten or killed and their personal property 
destroyed, were particularly brutal. The pogroms were led by the 
Black Hundreds, an officially sanctioned reactionary group com- 
posed largely of civil servants. 

In spite of persecution, the Jewish population in the Russian Em- 
pire expanded rapidly during the nineteenth century. Later, on 
the eve of World War I, it was estimated at 5.2 million. Jewish 
culture flourished within the bounds imposed on their community. 
Jews became more active politically, and the more radical among 
them joined the spreading revolutionary movements. 

For Jews, World War I and the Civil War that followed the revo- 
lutions in Russia were great calamities. The Pale of Setdement was 
the area where most of the prolonged military conflict took place, 
and Jews were killed indiscriminately by cossack armies, Russian 
White armies, Ukrainian nationalist forces, and anarchist peasant 
armies. In addition, the emergence of an independent Poland, 
Lithuania, and Latvia and the annexation of Bessarabia by Roma- 
nia left large numbers of Jews outside the Soviet state borders. By 
1922 the Jewish population in the Soviet Union was less than half 
of what it had been in the former Russian Empire. 

The early years of the Soviet state provided unusual opportuni- 
ties for Jews to mainstream into Soviet society. Although the major- 
ity of Jews had opposed the Bolsheviks during the Civil War, many 
supported the creation of the new, ''non-national" state, which 
they expected would tolerate Jews. Hundreds of thousands of Jews 
were integrated into Soviet cultural and economic life, and many 
Jews occupied key positions in both areas. Jews were particularly 



179 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

numerous in higher education and in scientific institutions. Offi- 
cial anti-Semitism ceased, restrictions on Jewish setdement were 
banned, Jewish culture flourished, and Jewish sections of the CPSU 
were established. Many Jews, such as Leon Trotsky, Grigorii V. 
Zinov'ev, Lev B. Kamenev, Lazar M. Kaganovich, and Maksim M. 
Litvinov, occupied the most prominent positions in party leader- 
ship. The purges in the mid- to late 1930s, however, reduced con- 
siderably the Jewish intelligentsia's participation in political life, 
particularly in the party's top echelons. 

The 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union was particularly 
horrific for Soviet Jewry. About 2.5 million Jews were annihilated, 
often by collaborators among the native populations in the occupied 
territories who aided the Germans in killing Jews. Paradoxically, 
in Soviet territories that escaped German occupation, anti-Semitism 
also reemerged in the local population's resentment against the often 
better educated, wealthier Jews who were evacuated there before 
the advancing German armies. 

Jews were the most dispersed nationality in the Soviet Union. 
In 1989 a majority of the 1 .4 million Jews in the Soviet Union lived 
in the three Slavic republics. Approximately 536,000 lived in the 
Russian Republic, 486,000 in the Ukrainian Republic, and 112,000 
in the Belorussian Republic. Large Jewish minorities also lived in 
the Uzbek and Moldavian republics, and smaller numbers of Jews 
lived in all the remaining republics. 

Although the Jewish (Yevreyskaya) Autonomous Oblast in the 
Soviet Far East was designated as the homeland of the Soviet Jews, 
only 8,887 Jews lived there in 1989, just over 4 percent of the popu- 
lation of the oblast. Never high, the number of Jews in the Jewish 
Autonomous Oblast has been declining — 14,269, or 8.8 percent, 
of the oblast's population in 1959 and 11,452, or 6.6 percent, in 
1970. 

Between 1959 and 1989, the Jewish population in the Soviet 
Union declined by about 900,000. The decline was attributed to 
several factors — low birth rate, intermarriage, concealment of 
Jewish identity, and emigration. 

Although 83 percent of the Jews regarded Russian as their na- 
tive language in 1979, Soviet authorities recognized Yiddish as the 
national language of Soviet Jewry. Small groups of Soviet Jews 
spoke other "Jewish" languages: in Soviet Central Asia some Jews 
spoke a Jewish dialect of Tadzhik, in the Caucasus area Jews spoke 
a form of Tat, while those in the Georgian Republic used their 
own dialect of the Georgian language. 

Soviet Jews were overwhelmingly urban. In 1979 over 98 per- 
cent of all Jews in the Soviet Union lived in urban areas. Four cities 



180 



Nationalities and Religions 



in particular — Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, and Odessa — had large 
concentrations of Jews. Along with being the most urbanized na- 
tionality, in the 1970s Jews also ranked first among all nationali- 
ties in educational level and in numbers of scientific workers per 
thousand. 

Traditionally, Jews have been highly represented in the CPSU, 
and their membership exceeded considerably their proportion of 
the total population. Soviet statistics show that 5.2 percent of all 
CPSU members in 1922 were Jews; in 1927 the figure declined 
to 4.3 percent. In 1976 the figure was 1.9 percent, almost three 
times the percentage of Jews in the general population. 

Chuvash 

Descended from the Finno-Ugric tribes of the middle Volga area 
and the Bulgar tribes of the Kama and Volga rivers, the Chuvash 
were identifiable as a separate people by the tenth century A.D. 
Conquered by the Mongols in the thirteenth century, they became 
part of the Kazan' Horde. Since the mid-sixteenth century, they 
have been under Russian rule. After the revolutions of 1917 and 
the Civil War, the Soviet government established the Chuvash 
Autonomous Oblast within the Russian Republic. In 1925 the ob- 
last became the Chuvash Autonomous Republic. 

The Chuvash were originally Muslim but were forced to con- 
vert to Christianity by the Russians. Many reconverted to Islam 
in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the 1980s, some 
were Orthodox Christians, others Sunni Muslims. 

In 1989 the Chuvash population was over 1.8 million. Slightly 
over half lived in the Chuvash Autonomous Republic, within the 
Russian Republic, where they constituted over 67 percent of the 
population. Large concentrations of Chuvash also resided in the 
Tatar Autonomous Republic, the Bashkir Autonomous Republic, 
and other parts of the Russian Republic. 

The Chuvash speak a unique language that includes a large num- 
ber of Finno-Ugric and Slavic loanwords but that belongs to the 
Bulgar group of Turkic languages. Because no written Chuvash 
language had existed before the Russian conquest, it is the only 
Turkic language in the Soviet Union to have always used a Cyril- 
lic alphabet. In 1989 about 76.5 percent of the Chuvash considered 
Chuvash as their first language. 

In the 1980s, the Chuvash remained overwhelmingly rural and 
agricultural. In 1987 Cheboksary, the administrative center of the 
Chuvash Autonomous Republic, was the only city in the autono- 
mous republic with over 100,000 people. 



181 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 
Bashkirs 

The Bashkir nationality developed from a mixture of Finno-Ugric 
tribes and a variety of Turkic tribes. They were recognized as a 
distinct people by the ninth century, when they settled an area be- 
tween the Volga, Kama, Tobol, and Ural rivers, where most Bash- 
kirs still live. Conquered by the Mongols of the Golden Horde in 
the thirteenth century, the Bashkirs were absorbed by different 
hordes after the breakup of the Golden Horde. Since the sixteenth 
century, they have been under Russian rule. Impoverished and 
dispossessed of their land by Russian settlers, the once-nomadic 
cattle breeders were forced to labor in the mines and new factories 
being built in eighteenth-century Russia. For two centuries prior 
to 1917, the Bashkirs had participated — together with the Chuvash, 
the Tatars, and other nationalities in the area — in the many vio- 
lent outbreaks and popular uprisings that swept the Russian Em- 
pire. After the revolutions of 1917, a strong Bashkir nationalist and 
Muslim movement developed in the territory of the Bashkirs, where 
much of the Civil War was fought. In their quest for an autono- 
mous state, the Bashkirs sought the support of both the Bolsheviks 
and the White forces. In the end, most joined with the Bolsheviks, 
and in February 1919 the Bashkir Autonomous Republic was es- 
tablished, the first autonomous republic within the Russian 
Republic. 

The great majority of Bashkirs were Sunni Muslims. They had 
originally adopted Islam in the tenth century, but many were forced 
by the Russians between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries to 
convert to Christianity. Most, however, reconverted to Islam in 
the nineteenth century. 

In 1989 over 1.4 million Bashkirs lived in the Soviet Union. 
Nearly 864,000 of them resided in the Bashkir Autonomous Repub- 
lic, where they made up about 22 percent of the population. The 
Bashkirs were only the third largest nationality in the Bashkir 
Autonomous Republic, behind the Russians and the Tatars. 

The Bashkir language belongs to the West Turkic group of lan- 
guages. Until the Soviet period, the Bashkirs did not have their 
own literary language, using at first the so-called Turki language 
and in the early twentieth century a Tatar language. Both languages 
used an Arabic script as their written language. In 1940 Soviet 
authorities gave the Bashkir language a Cyrillic script. In 1989 about 
72 percent of the Bashkirs claimed Bashkir as their first language. 

The Bashkirs remained predominantly rural and agricultural; 
less than 25 percent of them lived in urban areas in the 1980s. 
Although Ufa, the capital of the Bashkir Autonomous Republic, 



182 



Nationalities and Religions 



had over 1 million people in 1987, the overwhelming majority were 
Russians. 

Mordvins 

Like the Chuvash, the Mordvins were another nationality hav- 
ing their own autonomous republic along the middle reaches of 
the Volga River in the Russian Republic. The Mordvins, like the 
Chuvash and the Bashkirs, were Finno-Ugric and like the Chuvash 
had been a part of the Kazan' Horde prior to their incorporation 
into the Russian Empire in the sixteenth century. Soviet authori- 
ties established the Mordvinian Autonomous Oblast in 1930, which 
in 1934 became the Mordvinian Autonomous Republic. 

The Mordvins, who numbered around 1.2 million people in 
1989, were mostly scattered throughout the Russian Republic. Less 
than a third lived in the Mordvinian Autonomous Republic. 
Mordvins, who made up less than 32 percent of the population, 
were the second largest nationality in their autonomous republic, 
while Russians, with 61 percent, constituted a majority. 

A predominantly agricultural people, the Mordvins speak their 
own language, which belongs to the Finno-Ugric group of lan- 
guages. Their written language, which came into being under Soviet 
rule, uses a Cyrillic alphabet. In 1989 about 67 percent of the 
nationality claimed Mordvinian as their native tongue. Mordvin 
religious believers were mostly Orthodox Christians. 

Germans 

About 2 million Germans lived in the Soviet Union in 1989. The 
Kazakh Republic had the largest concentration of Germans (over 
956,000), followed by the Russian Republic (841,000) and the 
Kirgiz Republic (101 ,000). Prior to World War II, many Germans 
lived in their own autonomous republic on the Volga River and 
were referred to as Volga Germans. Stalin ordered their dispersal 
into Soviet Central Asia and Siberia when Germany attacked the 
Soviet Union in 1941 . Unrepatriated German prisoners of war fur- 
ther increased the German population in the Soviet Union. Since 
World War II, however, a considerable number of Germans have 
returned to German territory. In 1989 only 49 percent of the Ger- 
mans claimed German as their first language. 

Others 

In addition to the nationalities discussed in the preceding pages, 
many other nationalities with populations of fewer than 1 million 
have been recognized by Soviet authorities. Several of the larger 
nationalities not previously mentioned had autonomous republics 



183 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

of their own: the Buryat, the Yakut, the Ossetian, the Komi, the 
Tuvinian, the Kalmyk, and the Karelian nationalities. Also, two 
pairs of nationalities, the Chechen-Ingush and the Kabardian- 
Balkar, each shared an autonomous republic. About eighteen na- 
tionalities lived either in autonomous oblasts or in autonomous 
okruga. All of these nationalities resided in the Russian Republic. 
In many cases, Russians had either a majority or a plurality of 
the population in these autonomous territorial units. Numerous 
other nationalities without an administrative territory of their own 
lived scattered throughout the Soviet Union, generally in the Rus- 
sian Republic. 

Religious Groups in the Soviet Union 

Official figures on the number of religious believers in the Soviet 
Union were not available in 1989. But according to various Soviet 
and Western sources, over one- third of the people in the Soviet 
Union, an officially atheistic state, professed religious belief. Chris- 
tianity and Islam had the most believers. Christians belonged to 
various churches: Orthodox, which had the largest number of fol- 
lowers; Catholic; and Baptist and various other Protestant sects. 
The majority of the Islamic faithful were Sunni. Judaism also had 
many followers. Other religions, which were practiced by a rela- 
tively small number of believers, included Buddhism, Lamaism, 
and shamanism, a religion based on primitive spiritualism. 

The role of religion in the daily lives of Soviet citizens varied 
greatly. Because Islamic religious tenets and social values of Mus- 
lims are closely interrelated, religion appeared to have a greater 
influence on Muslims than on either Christians or other believers. 
Two-thirds of the Soviet population, however, had no religious be- 
liefs. About half the people, including members of the CPSU and 
high-level government officials, professed atheism. For the majority 
of Soviet citizens, therefore, religion seemed irrelevant. 

Orthodox 

Orthodox Christians constituted a majority of believers in the 
Soviet Union. They hold that the Orthodox Church is the true, 
holy, and apostolic church and that it traces its origin directly to 
the church established by Jesus Christ. Orthodox beliefs are based 
on the Bible and holy tradition as defined by the seven ecumenical 
councils held between A.D. 325 and 787. Orthodox teachings in- 
clude the doctrine of the Holy Trinity and the inseparable but dis- 
tinguishable union of the two natures of Jesus Christ — one divine, 
one human. Mary is revered as the mother of God but is not 
regarded as free from original sin. Other saints are also highly 



184 



Nationalities and Religions 



revered. Persons become saints simply by being recognized over 
a long period of time by the whole church. No official canoniza- 
tion is required. 

Orthodox believers recognize seven sacraments and punishment 
after death for sins committed but do not recognize the concept 
of purgatory. Baptism and the Eucharist are the two most impor- 
tant sacraments. After the ninth century, the sacrament of mar- 
riage became requisite for a valid marriage. Holy orders are 
conferred on both married and unmarried men, but only the lat- 
ter are eligible to become bishops. 

Worship is an essential part of Orthodoxy and is centered on 
the liturgical celebration every Sunday and holy day. Laity fully 
participate in the liturgy, responding in unison to the priest and 
singing hymns a cappella (organs and other musical instruments 
are not allowed). Church services are notable for their splendor, 
pageantry, profusion of candles, and bright colors. Priests' gar- 
ments, as well as altars and church vestments, are ornate and color- 
ful. Icons — pictures of Christ, Mary, and the saints, as well as 
representations of biblical events — adorn church walls. An ornate 
screen of icons, the iconostasis, separates the altar from the wor- 
shipers. Icons, often lit by candles, also adorn the homes of most 
Orthodox faithful. Icons are venerated but not worshiped. Wor- 
ship is reserved for God alone. 

In the late 1980s, three Orthodox churches claimed substantial 
memberships in the Soviet Union: the Russian Orthodox Church, 
the Georgian Orthodox Church, and the Ukrainian Autocephalous 
Orthodox Church. They, together with the much smaller Belorus- 
sian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, were members of the major 
confederation of Orthodox churches in the world, generally referred 
to as the Eastern Orthodox Church. The first two churches func- 
tioned openly and were tolerated by the regime. The Ukrainian 
and Belorussian autocephalous Orthodox churches were not per- 
mitted to function openly. 

Orthodox churches that make up Eastern Orthodoxy are autono- 
mous bodies, sometimes referred to as autocephalous or self- 
governing. The highest authority in each church is either a patri- 
arch or an archbishop who governs in conjunction with the Holy 
Synod, an assembly of bishops, priests, monks, and laity. The Holy 
Synod elects the head of its church, the patriarch or archbishop, 
and in concert administers the church. Matters of faith or other 
matters of importance are decided by ecumenical councils in which 
all member churches of Eastern Orthodoxy participate. Decisions 
of the councils regarding faith are accepted by the followers as 
infallible. 



185 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Eastern Orthodoxy does not have a strict hierarchical order with 
one head, but the ecumenical patriarchate in Istanbul is generally 
recognized as the leading official. Individual churches, however, 
share the same doctrine and beliefs. 

Russian Orthodox Church 

The Russian Orthodox Church, which has the largest religious 
following in the Soviet Union, traces its origins to Kievan Rus' 
when in 988 Prince Vladimir made Byzantine Christianity the state 
religion. When Kievan Rus' disintegrated in the thirteenth cen- 
tury, the metropolitan of Kiev and all Rus' moved to Vladimir, 
one of the newly established principalities in the northeast. By the 
fourteenth century, the metropolitan's seat was permanently estab- 
lished in Moscow, the capital of Muscovy. Until the fall of the 
Byzantine Empire, the Russian church was subordinate to the 
Orthodox patriarch in Constantinople (present-day Istanbul). After- 
ward, the Russian Orthodox Church considered itself independent 
of the church in Constantinople, and in 1589 the title of patriarch 
was accorded to the metropolitan in Moscow (see The Golden Age 
of Kiev; The Time of Troubles, ch. 1). 

The Russian Orthodox Church in Muscovy was closely tied to 
the state and was subservient to the throne, following a tradition 
established by the Byzantine Empire. That subservience was rein- 
forced during Moscow's drive to acquire the lands of Kievan Rus', 
a drive that the Russian Orthodox Church supported. Another 
characteristic of the medieval Russian Orthodox Church was its 
emphasis on asceticism and the development of monasticism. 
Hundreds of monasteries dotted the forests and remote regions of 
medieval Russia. Monasteries not only served as the centers of 
religious and cultural life in Russia but also played important social 
and economic roles as they settled and developed their surround- 
ing land. 

Isolated from the West, the Russian Orthodox Church was largely 
unaffected by the Renaissance and Reformation and continued 
its essentially inward orientation. The introduction of Western- 
influenced doctrinal and liturgical reforms by Ukrainian clergy in 
the seventeenth century aroused deep resentment among Russian 
Orthodox believers and clergy and led to a split within the church 
(see Expansion and Westernization, ch. 1). 

Peter the Great, while transforming Muscovy into the Russian 
Empire, further curtailed the minimal secular power the Russian 
Orthodox Church had held previously. In 1721 Peter abolished 
the patriarchate and established a governmental Holy Synod, an 
administrative organ, to control the church. From that time through 



186 



Church of the Epiphany (completed in 1845), Moscow. A functioning 
church, it is the seat of the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church. 

Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 



187 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

the fall of the Russian monarchy in 1917, the Russian Orthodox 
Church remained directly under state control. Its spiritual and 
worldly power was further reduced after the Bolsheviks came to 
power (see Peter the Great and the Formation of the Russian 
Empire, ch. 1). 

According to both Soviet and Western sources, in the late 1980s 
the Russian Orthodox Church had over 50 million believers but 
only about 7,000 registered active churches. Over 4,000 of the 
registered Orthodox churches were located in the Ukrainian Repub- 
lic (almost half of that number in western Ukraine, where much 
of the population remained faithful to the banned Ukrainian Catho- 
lic Church). The distribution of the Russian Orthodox Church's 
six monasteries and ten convents was equally disproportionate. Only 
two of the monasteries were located in the Russian Republic. 
Another two were in the Ukrainian Republic and one each in the 
Belorussian and Lithuanian republics. Seven convents were located 
in the Ukrainian Republic and one each in the Moldavian, Esto- 
nian, and Latvian republics; none were located in the Russian 
Republic. Because most of the Orthodox believers in these western 
Soviet republics were not Russian, many resented the word Russian 
in the title of the Russian Orthodox Church. They viewed that 
church as a willing instrument of the Soviet government's Rus- 
sianization policy, pointing out that only Russian is used in the 
liturgical services in most Russian Orthodox churches in Ukrainian 
and Belorussian republics and elsewhere. 

Georgian Orthodox Church 

The Georgian Orthodox Church, another autocephalous mem- 
ber of Eastern Orthodoxy, was headed by a Georgian patriarch. 
In the late 1980s, it had 15 bishops, 180 priests, 200 parishes, and 
an estimated 2.5 million followers. 

The spread of Christianity in Georgia began in the fourth cen- 
tury. It became the state religion in the sixth century, and in 1057 
the Georgian Orthodox Church became autocephalous. In 1811 
the Georgian Orthodox Church was incorporated into the Russian 
Orthodox Church but regained its independence in 1917 after the 
fall of tsarism. Nevertheless, the Russian Orthodox Church did 
not officially recognize its independence until 1943. 

Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church 

When the metropolitan of Kiev and all Rus' moved to Moscow 
in the fourteenth century, Ukrainian Orthodox believers were left 
without an ecclesiastical leader. From the mid-fifteenth to the late 
seventeenth century, the see of Kiev was under the jurisdiction of 



188 



Nationalities and Religions 



the patriarch of Constantinople and had its own metropolitan. In 
1686, however, the Russian government's pressure on Constan- 
tinople led to a transfer of the metropolitan see of Kiev to the juris- 
diction of the patriarch of Moscow. 

The Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church separated from 
the Russian Orthodox Church in 1919, and the short-lived Ukrainian 
state adopted a decree confirming autocephaly for the Ukrainian 
Orthodox Church. The church's independence was reaffirmed by 
the Bolshevik regime in the Ukrainian Republic, and by 1924 the 
church had 30 bishops, almost 1,500 priests, nearly 1,100 parishes, 
and between 3 and 6 million members. 

From its inception, the church faced the hostility of the Russian 
Orthodox Church in the Ukrainian Republic. In the late 1920s, 
Soviet authorities accused the church of nationalist tendencies. In 
1930 the government forced the church to reorganize as the 
"Ukrainian Orthodox Church," and few of its parishes survived 
until 1936. Nevertheless, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox 
Church continued to function outside the borders of the Soviet 
Union, and it was revived on Ukrainian territory under the Ger- 
man occupation during World War II. In the late 1980s, some of 
the Orthodox faithful in the Ukrainian Republic appealed to the 
Soviet government to reestablish the Ukrainian Autocephalous 
Orthodox Church. 

Armenian Apostolic 

The Armenian Apostolic religion is an independent Eastern 
Christian faith. It follows Orthodox Christian beliefs but differs 
from most other Christian religions in its refusal to accept the doc- 
trine of Christ's two natures — divine and human — promulgated 
by the Council of Chalcedon in 451. 

Armenians were converted to Christianity in the third century 
and became the first people in the world to adopt Christianity as 
a state religion. Despite seizing its property and subsequently per- 
secuting and harassing its clergy and faithful, the Soviet govern- 
ment has allowed the Armenian Apostolic Church to continue as 
the national church of the Armenian Republic. 

In the 1980s, the Armenian Apostolic Church had about 4 mil- 
lion faithful, or almost the entire Armenian population of the coun- 
try. The church was permitted 6 bishops, between 50 and 100 
priests, and between 20 and 30 churches, and it had one theologi- 
cal seminary and six monasteries. 

Catholic 

Catholics accounted for a substantial and active religious body 
in the Soviet Union. Their number increased dramatically with 



189 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



the annexation of western Ukraine in 1939 and the Baltic repub- 
lics in 1940. Catholics in the Soviet Union were divided between 
those belonging to the Roman Catholic Church, recognized by the 
government, and those remaining loyal to the Ukrainian Catholic 
Church, banned since 1946. 

Roman Catholic Church 

The majority of the 5.5 million Roman Catholics in the Soviet 
Union lived in the Lithuanian, Belorussian, and Latvian repub- 
lics, with a sprinkling in the Moldavian, Ukrainian, and Russian 
republics. Since World War II, the most active Roman Catholic 
Church in the Soviet Union was in the Lithuanian Republic, where 
the majority of people are Catholics. The Roman Catholic Church 
there has been viewed as an institution that both fosters and de- 
fends Lithuanian national interests and values. Since 1972 a Catho- 
lic underground publication, The Chronicle of the Catholic Church in 
Lithuania, has spoken not only for Lithuanians' religious rights but 
also for their national rights. 

Ukrainian Catholic Church 

The Ukrainian Catholic Church was established in 1596, when 
a number of Ukrainian and Belorussian bishops, clergy, and faithful 
of the Orthodox Church recognized the supremacy of the Roman 
Catholic pope at the Union of Brest. Nevertheless, the Uniates (see 
Glossary) retained the administrative autonomy of their church and 
preserved most of their traditional rites and rituals, as well as the 
Old Church Slavonic (see Glossary) liturgical language. Belorus- 
sian Uniates were forced to reconvert to Orthodoxy after the par- 
titions of Poland in the late eighteenth century when Belorussia 
became part of the Russian Empire. The Ukrainian Catholic 
Church, however, continued to function and grow in western 
Ukraine, which was ceded to the Austrian Empire in the partitions. 
By the twentieth century, it acquired standing as a national church 
in western Ukraine. Its close identity with the national aspirations 
of the Ukrainian people and the loyalty it commanded among its 
4 million faithful aroused the hostility of the Soviet regime. In 1945 
Soviet authorities arrested and deported the church's metropoli- 
tan and nine bishops, as well as hundreds of clergy and leading 
lay activists. A year later, the Ukrainian Catholic Church, which 
at that time had some 2,500 parishes, was declared illegal and for- 
cibly united with the Russian Orthodox Church. Nonetheless, the 
Ukrainian Catholic Church continued to survive underground (see 
Policy Toward Nationalities and Religions in Practice, this ch.). 



190 



Taza Pir Mosque (completed in 
1906) , Baku, Azerbaydzhan 
Republic. An active mosque, 

it is the largest in the Caucasus. 
Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 



Various Protestant religious groups, according to Western 
sources, collectively had as many as 5 million followers in the 1980s. 
Evangelical Christian Baptists constituted the largest Protestant 
group. Located throughout the Soviet Union, some congregations 
were registered with the government and functioned with official 
approval. Many other unregistered congregations carried on reli- 
gious activity without such approval. 

Lutherans, making up the second largest Protestant group, lived 
for the most part in the Latvian and Estonian republics. In the 
1980s, Lutheran churches in these republics identified to some ex- 
tent with nationality issues in the two republics. The regime's 
attitude toward Lutherans has been generally benign. A number 
of smaller congregations of Pentecostals, Seventh-Day Adventists, 
Mennonites, Jehovah's Witnesses, and other Christian groups car- 
ried on religious activities, with or without official sanction. 

Muslim 

In the late 1980s, Islam had the second largest number of be- 
lievers in the Soviet Union, with between 45 and 50 million peo- 
ple identifying themselves as Muslims. But the Soviet Union had 
only about 500 working Islamic mosques, a fraction of the mosques 
in prerevolutionary Russia, and Soviet law forbade Islamic religious 



191 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



activity outside working mosques and Islamic schools. All work- 
ing mosques, religious schools, and Islamic publications were 
supervised by four "spiritual directorates" established by Soviet 
authorities to provide governmental control. The Spiritual Direc- 
torate for Central Asia and Kazakhstan, the Spiritual Directorate 
for the European Soviet Union and Siberia, and the Spiritual Direc- 
torate for the Northern Caucasus and Dagestan oversaw the reli- 
gious life of Sunni (see Glossary) Muslims. The Spiritual Directorate 
for Transcaucasia dealt with both Sunni and Shia (see Glossary) 
Muslims. The overwhelming majority of the Muslims were Sunnis; 
only about 10 percent, most of whom lived in the Azerbaydzhan 
Republic, were Shias. 

Islam originated in the Arabian Peninsula in 610 when Muham- 
mad (later known as the Prophet), a merchant in the Arabian town 
of Mecca, began to preach the first in a series of revelations granted 
him by God through the angel Gabriel. Muhammad's denuncia- 
tion of the polytheism of his fellow Meccans earned him the bitter 
enmity of the leaders of Mecca, whose economy was based largely 
on the thriving business generated by pilgrimages to the pagan 
Kaabah shrine. In 622 Muhammad and a group of followers were 
invited to the town of Yathrib, which came to be known as Medina 
(meaning the city) because it was the center of Muhammad's ac- 
tivities. The move to Medina, called the hijra (hegira), marks the 
beginning of Islam as a force in history; it also marks the first year 
of the Muslim calendar. Subsequently, the Prophet converted the 
people of the Arabian Peninsula to Islam and consolidated both 
spiritual and temporal leadership of all Arabia in his person. 

After Muhammad's death in 632, his followers compiled those 
of his words regarded as coming directly from God as the Quran, 
the holy, scripture of Islam; others of his sayings and teachings and 
precedents of his personal behavior, recalled by those who had 
known him during his lifetime, became the hadith. Together they 
form the sunna, a comprehensive guide to the spiritual, ethical, 
and social life of orthodox Muslims. Muhammad's followers spread 
Islam to various parts of the world. Some oasis-dwelling people 
of Central Asia were first converted to Islam in the seventh cen- 
tury. The Tatars of the Golden Horde, who converted to Islam 
in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, spread Islam through- 
out Central Asia (see The Mongol Invasion, ch. 1). Most of the 
Kirgiz and Kazakh tribes of Central Asia, however, converted to 
Islam in the nineteenth century while they were under Russian rule. 
In the Caucasus region, Islam was introduced in the eighth cen- 
tury, but not until the seventeenth century was it firmly established 
there. 



192 



Nationalities and Religions 



Islam means submission (to God), and one who submits is a Mus- 
lim. The shahada (testimony or creed) states the central belief of 
Islam: "There is no god but God [Allah], and Muhammad is his 
Prophet." Muhammad is considered the "seal of the prophets"; 
his revelation completes for all time the biblical revelations received 
by Jews and Christians. 

The duties of Muslims form the five pillars of the faith. They 
are the recitation of the creed (shahada), daily prayer (salat), alms- 
giving (zakat), fasting (sawm), and pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca. Be- 
lievers pray while facing toward Mecca in a prescribed manner each 
day at dawn, midday, midafternoon, sunset, and nightfall. When 
possible, men pray in congregation at a mosque under a prayer 
leader; on Fridays they are obliged to do so. Women generally pray 
at home but may also attend public worship at a mosque, where 
they are segregated from the men. A special functionary, the 
muezzin, intones a call to prayer to the entire community at the 
appropriate hour. 

Since the early days of Islam, religious authorities have imposed 
a tax (zakat) on personal property proportionate to one's wealth; 
this is distributed, along with free-will gifts, to the mosques and 
to the needy. The ninth month of the Muslim calendar is Ramadan, 
a period of obligatory fasting (sawm) during daylight hours for all 
but the sick, the weak, children, and others for whom fasting would 
be an unusual burden. Finally, all Muslims at least once in their 
lifetime should, if possible, make the hajj, or pilgrimage, to the 
holy city of Mecca to participate in special rites held there during 
the twelfth month of the calendar. 

Ideally every Muslim is expected to practice all five pillars of 
the faith, but Islam accepts what is possible under the circumstances. 
This acceptance is particularly significant for Soviet Muslims, who 
can thus function both as Soviet citizens and as members of an 
Islamic community. Soviet Muslims, however, have had difficulty 
adhering to certain Islamic practices. For example, fasting during 
the month of Ramadan was infrequently observed because of the 
demands of meeting agricultural and factory work quotas. In the 
late 1980s, permission to make the hajj was given only to about 
twenty Soviet Muslims annually. A commonly observed practice, 
however, was circumcision of young Muslim boys at around the 
age of seven. Regardless of the degree of their adherence to all 
Islamic precepts, most Soviet citizens born to Muslim parents con- 
sider themselves Muslims. 

A Muslim is in direct relationship with God; Islam has neither 
intermediaries nor clergy. Those who lead prayers, preach sermons, 
and interpret the law do so by virtue of their superior knowledge 



193 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

and scholarship rather than by virtue of special powers or preroga- 
tives conferred by ordination. 

The differences between Sunnis and Shias were originally polit- 
ical. After Muhammad's death, the leaders of the Muslim com- 
munity chose Abu Bakr, the Prophet's father-in-law, as caliph (from 
the Arabic word khalifa; literally, successor). Some persons favored 
Ali, the Prophet's cousin and husband of his favorite daughter, 
but Ali and his supporters (the Shiat Ali, or Party of Ali) eventu- 
ally recognized the community's choice. Ali became the fourth 
caliph in 656. A great schism followed, splitting Islam between the 
Sunnis, who supported an elected caliph, and the Shias, who sup- 
ported Ali's line as well as a hereditary caliph who served as spiritual 
and political leader. Over the centuries, the Sunnis have come to 
be identified as the more orthodox of the two branches. 

The differences between the Sunni and Shia interpretations 
rapidly took on theological and metaphysical overtones. The Sun- 
nis retained the doctrine of leadership by consensus, although Arabs 
and members of the Quraysh, Muhammad's tribe, predominated 
in the early years. Meanwhile, the Shia doctrine of rule by divine 
right became more and more firmly established, and disagreements 
over which of several pretenders had the truer claim to the mysti- 
cal power of Ali precipitated further schisms. Some Shia groups 
developed doctrines of divine leadership far removed from the strict 
monotheism of early Islam, including belief in hidden but divinely 
chosen leaders and in spiritual powers that equaled or surpassed 
those of the Prophet himself. 

Muslims in the Soviet Union are a disparate and varied group. 
Although most of them reside in Central Asia, they can be found 
on the western borders of the Soviet Union as well as in Siberia 
and near the border with China. Ethnically they include Turkic 
people like the Azerbaydzhanis, Uzbeks, Tatars, and Uygurs; 
Iranian people like the Tadzhiks, Ossetians, Kurds, and Baluchi; 
Caucasian people like the Avars, Lezgins, and Tabasarans; and 
several other smaller groups. 

Soviet Muslims also differ linguistically and culturally from each 
other. Among them, they speak about fifteen Turkic languages, 
ten Iranian languages, and thirty Caucasian languages. Hence, 
communication between different Muslim groups has been difficult. 
Although in 1 989 Russian often served as a lingua franca among 
some educated Muslims, the number of Muslims fluent in Russian 
was low. Culturally, some Muslim groups had highly developed 
urban traditions, whereas others were recently nomadic. Some lived 
in industrialized environments; others resided in isolated moun- 
tainous regions. In sum, Muslims were not a homogeneous group 



194 



Nationalities and Religions 



with a common national identity and heritage, although they shared 
the same religion and the same country. 

In the late 1980s, unofficial Muslim congregations, meeting in 
tea houses and private homes with their own mullahs (see Glos- 
sary), greatly outnumbered those in the officially sanctioned 
mosques. The mullahs in unofficial Islam were either self-taught 
or were informally trained by other mullahs. In the late 1980s, un- 
official Islam appeared to split into fundamentalist congregations 
and groups that emphasized Sufism (see Glossary). 

Policy Toward Nationalities and Religions in Practice 

Since coming to power in 1917, the Soviet regime has failed to 
develop and apply a consistent and lasting policy toward national- 
ities and religions. Official policies and practices have not only 
varied with time but also have differed in their application from 
one nationality to another and from one religion to another. 
Although all Soviet leaders had the same long-range goal of de- 
veloping a cohesive Soviet people, they pursued different policies 
to achieve it. For the Soviet regime, the questions of nationality 
and religion were always closely linked. Not surprisingly, there- 
fore, the attitude toward religion also varied from a total ban on 
some religions to official support of others. 

The Soviet Constitution, in theory, describes the regime's posi- 
tion regarding nationalities and religions. It states that every citizen 
of the Soviet Union is also a member of a particular nationality, 
and a citizen's internal passport identifies that nationality. The Con- 
stitution grants a large degree of local autonomy, but this auton- 
omy has always been subordinated to central authority. In addition, 
because local and central administrative structures are often not 
clearly divided, local autonomy is further weakened. Although 
under the Constitution all nationalities are equal, in practice they 
have not been. In 1989 only fifteen nationalities had union re- 
public status, granting them, in principle, many rights, including 
the right to secede from the union. Twenty- two nationalities lived 
in autonomous republics with a degree of local self-government 
and representation in the Council of Nationalities in the Supreme 
Soviet. Eighteen additional nationalities had territorial enclaves 
(autonomous oblasts and autonomous okruga) but possessed very 
little power of self-government. The remaining nationalities had 
no right of self-management. Stalin's definition in 1913 that "A 
nation is a historically constituted and stable community of people 
formed on the basis of common language, territory, economic life, 
and psychological makeup revealed in a common culture" was 
retained by Soviet authorities through the 1980s. But, in granting 



195 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



nationalities a union republic status, three additional factors were 
considered: a population of at least 1 million, territorial compact- 
ness of the nationality, and location on the borders of the Soviet 
Union. 

Although Vladimir I. Lenin believed that eventually all nation- 
alities would merge into one, he insisted that the Soviet Union be 
established as a federation of formally equal nations. In the 1920s, 
genuine cultural concessions were granted to the nationalities. Com- 
munist elites of various nationalities were permitted to flourish and 
to have considerable self-government. National cultures, religions, 
and languages were not merely tolerated but in areas with Mus- 
lim populations were encouraged. 

These policies toward the nationalities were reversed in the 1930s 
when Stalin achieved dictatorial control of the Soviet Union. Sta- 
lin's watchwords regarding nationalities were centralism and con- 
formity. Although Georgian, Stalin pursued a policy of drawing 
other nationalities closer to the Russian nationality {sblizhenie — 
see Glossary). He looked toward Russian culture and language as 
the links that would bind different nations together, creating in the 
process a single Soviet people who would not only speak Russian 
but also for all intents and purposes be Russian. Native commu- 
nist elites were purged and replaced with Russians or thoroughly 
Russified persons. Teaching the Russian language in all schools 
became mandatory. Centralized authority in Moscow was strength- 
ened, and self-governing powers of the republics were curtailed. 
Nationalities were brutally suppressed by such means as the forced 
famine of 1932-33 in the Ukrainian Republic and the northern 
Caucasus and the wholesale deportations of nationalities during 
World War II, against their constitutional rights. The Great Ter- 
ror and the policies following World War II were particularly 
effective in destroying the non-Russian elites. At the same time, 
the onset of World War II led Stalin to exploit Russian national- 
ism. Russian history was glorified, and Soviet power was identi- 
fied with Russian national interests. In the post- World War II 
victory celebration, Stalin toasted exclusively the Russian people 
while many other nationalities were punished as traitors. 

The death of Stalin and the rise of Nikita S. Khrushchev to power 
eliminated some of the harshest measures against nationalities. 
Among the non-Russian nationalities, interest in their Culture, his- 
tory, and literature revived. Khrushchev, however, pursued a policy 
of merger of nationalities (sliianie — see Glossary). In 1958 he im- 
plemented educational laws that furthered the favoring of the Rus- 
sian language over native languages and aroused resentment among 
Soviet nationalities. 



196 



Nationalities and Religions 



Although demographic changes in the 1960s and 1970s whittled 
down the Russian majority overall, they also led to two nationali- 
ties (the Kazaks and Kirgiz in the 1979 census) becoming minori- 
ties in their own republics and decreased considerably the majority 
of the titular nationalities in other republics. This situation led 
Leonid I. Brezhnev to declare at the Twenty-Fourth Party Con- 
gress in 1971 that the process of creating a unified Soviet people 
had been completed, and proposals were made to abolish the fed- 
erative system and replace it with a single state. The regime's op- 
timism was soon shattered, however. In the 1970s, a broad national 
dissent movement began to spread throughout the Soviet Union. 
Its manifestations were many and diverse. The Jews insisted on 
their right to emigrate to Israel; the Crimean Tatars demanded 
to be allowed to return to Crimea; the Lithuanians called for the 
restoration of the rights of the Catholic Church; and Helsinki watch 
groups (see Glossary) were established in the Georgian, Lithuanian, 
and Ukrainian republics. Petitions, samizdat (see Glossary) litera- 
ture, and occasional public demonstrations voiced public demands 
for the rights of nationalities within the human rights context. By 
the end of the 1970s, however, massive and concerted efforts by 
the KGB had largely suppressed the national dissent movement. 
Nevertheless, Brezhnev had learned his lesson. Proposals to dis- 
mantle the federative system were abandoned, and a policy of fur- 
ther drawing of nationalities together (sblizhenie) was pursued. 

Language has often been used as an important tool of the na- 
tionality policy. According to the Constitution, the Soviet Union 
has no official language, and all languages are equal and may be 
used in all circumstances. Citizens have the right to be educated 
in their own language or any language chosen by them or by their 
parents. Nevertheless, demography and Soviet policies have made 
Russian the dominant language. Under Brezhnev, Soviet officials 
emphasized in coundess pronouncements that the Russian language 
has been ' 'voluntarily adopted" by the Soviet people as the lan- 
guage of international communication, has promoted the " social, 
political, and ideological unity" of Soviet nationalities, has enriched 
the cultures of all other nationalities in the Soviet Union, and has 
given "each Soviet people access to the treasure of world civiliza- 
tion." Russian has been a compulsory subject in all elementary 
and secondary schools since 1938. In the schools of all the repub- 
lics, where both a national language and Russian were used, science 
and technical courses have been mainly taught in Russian. Some 
higher education courses have been available only in Russian. Rus- 
sian has been the common language of public administration in 
every republic. It has been used exclusively in the armed forces, 



197 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

in scientific research, and in high technology. Yet despite these 
measures to create a single Russian language in the Soviet Union, 
the great majority of non- Russians considered their own native lan- 
guage their first language. Fluency in Russian varies from one non- 
Russian nationality to another but is generally low, especially among 
the nationalities of Soviet Central Asia. A proposal in the 1978 
Georgian Republic's constitution to give the Russian language equal 
status with the Georgian language provoked large demonstrations 
in Tbilisi and was quickly withdrawn. 

Soviet policy toward religion has been based on the ideology of 
Marxism-Leninism (see Glossary), which has made atheism the 
official doctrine of the Soviet Union. Marxism-Leninism has con- 
sistently advocated the control, suppression, and, ultimately, the 
elimination of religious beliefs. In the 1920s and 1930s, such or- 
ganizations as the League of the Militant Godless ridiculed all 
religions and harassed believers. Propagation of atheism in schools 
has been another consistent policy. The regime's efforts to eradi- 
cate religion in the Soviet Union, however, have varied over the 
years with respect to particular religions and have been affected 
by higher state interests. 

Soviet officials closely identified religion with nationality. The 
implementation of policy toward a particular religion, therefore, 
has generally depended on the regime's perception of the bond be- 
tween that religion and the nationality practicing it, the size of the 
religious community, the degree of allegiance of the religion to out- 
side authority, and the nationality's willingness to subordinate it- 
self to political authority. Thus the smaller the religious community 
and the closer it identified with a particular nationality, the more 
restrictive were the regime's policies, especially if in addition it 
recognized a foreign religious authority such as the pope. 

As for the Russian Orthodox Church, Soviet authorities have 
sought to control it and, in times of national crisis, to exploit it 
for the regime's own purposes; but their ultimate goal has been 
to eliminate it. During the first five years of Soviet power, the 
Bolsheviks executed 28 Russian Orthodox bishops and over 1,200 
Russian Orthodox priests. Many others were imprisoned or exiled. 
Believers were harassed and persecuted. Most seminaries were 
closed, and publication of most religious material was prohibited. 
By 1941 only 500 churches remained open out of about 54,000 in 
existence prior to World War I. 

The German attack on the Soviet Union in 1941 forced Stalin to 
enlist the Russian Orthodox Church as an ally to arouse Russian pa- 
triotism against foreign aggression. Religious life revived within the 
Russian Orthodox Church. Thousands of churches were reopened 



198 



Nationalities and Religions 



and multiplied to 22,000 before Khrushchev came to power. The 
regime permitted religious publications, and church membership 
grew. 

The regime's policy of cooperation with the Russian Orthodox 
Church was reversed by Khrushchev. Although the church re- 
mained officially sanctioned, in 1959 Khrushchev launched an anti- 
religions campaign that was continued in a less stringent manner 
by his successor. By 1975 the number of operating Russian Ortho- 
dox churches was reduced to 7,000. Some of the most prominent 
members of the Russian Orthodox hierarchy and activists were 
jailed or forced to leave the church. Their place was taken by a 
docile clergy who were obedient to the state and who were some- 
times infiltrated by KGB agents, making the Russian Orthodox 
Church useful to the regime. The church has espoused and 
propagated Soviet foreign policy and has furthered the Russiflca- 
tion of non-Russian believers, such as Orthodox Ukrainians and 
Belorussians. 

The regime applied a different policy toward the Ukrainian Auto- 
cephalous Orthodox Church and the Belorussian Autocephalous 
Orthodox Church. Viewed by the government as very nationalis- 
tic, both churches were suppressed, first at the end of the 1920s 
and again in 1944 after they had renewed themselves under Ger- 
man occupation. The leadership of both churches was decimated; 
/ large numbers of priests — 2,000 Belorussian priests alone — were 
shot or sent to labor camps, and the believers of these two churches 
were harassed and persecuted. 

The policy toward the Georgian Orthodox Church has been 
somewhat different. That church has fared far worse than the Rus- 
sian Orthodox Church under the Soviet regime. During World War 
II, however, the Georgian Orthodox Church was allowed greater 
autonomy in running its affairs in return for the church's call to 
its members to support the war effort. The church did not, however, 
achieve the kind of accommodation with the authorities that the 
Russian Orthodox Church had. The government reimposed tight 
control over it after the war. Out of some 2,100 churches in 1917, 
only 200 were still open in the 1980s, and the church was forbid- 
den to serve its faithful outside the Georgian Republic. In many 
cases, the regime forced the church to conduct services in Old 
Church Slavonic instead of in the Georgian language. 

The Soviet government's policies toward the Catholic Church 
were strongly influenced by Soviet Catholics' recognition of an out- 
side authority as head of their church. Also, in the two republics 
where most of the Catholics lived, the Lithuanian Republic and 
the Ukrainian Republic, Catholicism and nationalism were closely 



199 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

linked. Although the Roman Catholic Church in the Lithuanian 
Republic was tolerated, large numbers of the clergy were im- 
prisoned, many seminaries were closed, and police agents infiltrated 
the remainder. The anti-Catholic campaign in the Lithuanian 
Republic abated after Stalin's death, but harsh measures against 
the church were resumed in 1957 and continued through the 
Brezhnev era. 

Soviet religious policy was particularly harsh toward the Ukrain- 
ian Catholic Church. Ukrainian Catholics fell under Soviet rule 
in 1939 when western Ukraine was incorporated into the Soviet 
Union as part of the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact. Although 
the Ukrainian Catholic Church was permitted to function, it was 
almost immediately subjected to intense harassment. Retreating 
before the German army in 1941, Soviet authorities arrested large 
numbers of Ukrainian Catholic priests, who were either killed or de- 
ported to Siberia. After the Red Army reoccupied western Ukraine 
in 1944, the Soviet regime liquidated the Ukrainian Catholic 
Church by arresting its metropolitan, all of its bishops, hundreds 
of clergy, and the more active faithful, killing some and sending 
the rest to labor camps, where, with few exceptions, they perished. 
At the same time, Soviet authorities forced some of the remaining 
clergy to abrogate the union with Rome and subordinate them- 
selves to the Russian Orthodox Church. 

Prior to World War II, the number of Protestants in the Soviet 
Union was low in comparison with other believers, but they have 
shown remarkable growth since then. In 1944 the Soviet govern- 
ment established the Ail-Union Council of Evangelical Christian 
Baptists to give the government some control over the various Pro- 
testant sects. Many congregations refused to join this body, how- 
ever, and others that initially joined the council subsequently left. 
All found that the state, through the council, was interfering in 
church life. 

The regime's policy toward the Islamic religion has been affected, 
on the one hand, by the large Muslim population, its close ties to 
national cultures, and its tendency to accept Soviet authority and, 
on the other hand, by its susceptibility to foreign influence. Since 
the early 1920s, the Soviet regime, fearful of a pan-Islamic move- 
ment, has sought to divide Soviet Muslims into smaller, separate 
entities. This separation was accomplished by creating six separate 
Muslim republics and by fostering the development of a separate 
culture and language in each of them. Although actively encourag- 
ing atheism, Soviet authorities have permitted some limited reli- 
gious activity in all the Muslim republics. Mosques functioned in 
most large cities of the Central Asian republics and the Azerbaydzhan 



200 



Nationalities and Religions 



Republic; however, their number had decreased from 25,000 in 
1917 to 500 in the 1970s. In 1989, as part of the general relaxation 
of restrictions on religions, some additional Muslim religious asso- 
ciations were registered, and some of the mosques that had been 
closed by the government were returned to Muslim communities. 
The government also announced plans to permit training of lim- 
ited numbers of Muslim religious leaders in courses of two- and 
five-year duration in Ufa and Baku, respectively. 

Although Lenin found anti-Semitism abhorrent, the regime was 
hostile toward Judaism from the beginning. In 1919 Soviet authori- 
ties abolished Jewish community councils, which were tradition- 
ally responsible for maintaining synagogues. They created a special 
Jewish section of the party, whose tasks included propaganda against 
Jewish clergy and religion. Training of rabbis became impossible, 
and until the late 1980s only one Yiddish periodical was published. 
Hebrew, because of its identification with Zionism, was taught only 
in schools for diplomats. Most of the 5,000 synagogues function- 
ing prior to the Bolshevik Revolution were closed under Stalin, 
and others were closed under Khrushchev. For all intents and pur- 
poses, the practice of Judaism became impossible, intensifying the 
desire of Jews to leave the Soviet Union. 

Manifestations of National Assertiveness 

Gorbachev's policy of glasnost' (see Glossary) exposed the official 
corruption, economic malaise, and general discontent that had per- 
meated Soviet society for some time prior to his assumption of power. 
Gorbachev encouraged public discussion of sensitive issues, including 
the question of nationalities and religions in the Soviet Union. These 
policies led to a renewed ferment among the nationalities through- 
out the Soviet Union. By 1987 the Baltic nationalities, Armenians, 
Ukrainians, Soviet Muslims, Belorussians, Georgians, and others, 
including native Russians themselves, were expressing their national 
and religious grievances and calling on the regime to redress them. 

Baltic Nationalities 

In the 1980s, the most extensive movements among the Soviet 
nationalities, in terms of both participation and far-reaching de- 
mands, took place in the Baltic republics. In 1986 peaceful demon- 
strations began in Riga, the capital of the Latvian Republic, and 
from there quickly spread to the other two republics. Originally, 
the demonstrations were held to denounce Stalin's crimes and to 
demand that the Soviet government reveal the truth about the forced 
annexation of the Baltic states into the Soviet Union in 1940. In 
the late 1980s, public demonstrations of 100,000 people or more 



201 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

occurred in all three republics. The republics' parliaments declared 
their native languages as official and replaced the republics' flags 
with their pre- 1940 national flags. All demanded sovereignty in 
managing their political and economic affairs, formed quasi-political 
popular fronts, and replaced their respective CPSU first secretaries 
with less conservative and more nationalistic party leaders. The 
Soviet regime made concessions to the Catholic Church in the 
Lithuanian Republic, permitting the pope to elevate one of the 
bishops to cardinal. Churches were reopened for worship in all three 
republics, and a more tolerant attitude toward religion was gener- 
ally accepted. 

Armenians 

The complexity of the nationalities question and the potential 
danger it has raised for the Soviet regime were clearly demonstrated 
in the nationalist movements in the Armenian Republic in 1988. 
In the past, Armenians had been one of the nationalities most loyal 
to Moscow. Nevertheless, in February 1988 hundreds of thousands 
of Armenians staged a four-day demonstration in Yerevan, the 
republic's capital, demanding the return to the Armenian Repub- 
lic of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast, an autonomous 
region that had been under the administration of the Azerbay- 
dzhan Republic since the early 1920s but was populated largely 
by Armenians. When Soviet authorities showed some sympathy 
for Armenian demands, infuriated Azerbaydzhan residents of the 
city of Sumgait, which had a considerable Armenian population, 
went on a rampage that left 32 dead and 197 wounded, according 
to official accounts. The regime recognized that altering national- 
ity borders could provoke dire consequences and refused the 
Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast' s request to unite with the 
Armenian Republic. When the Nagorno-Karabakh soviet voted 
to secede from the Azerbaydzhan Republic, the regime declared 
the vote illegal, arrested and expelled the leader of the Nagorno- 
Karabakh Committee, which had been formed in the Armenian 
Republic, and sent armed troops into Yerevan, the capital of the 
Armenian Republic. Other members of the Nagorno-Karabakh 
Committee were arrested and taken to Moscow. But the aroused 
passions continued, and the Armenian national movement gathered 
momentum in September 1988, when 100,000 people demonstrated 
in Yerevan. 

Ukrainians 

National assertiveness was awakened much more slowly in the 
Ukrainian Republic. Although Gorbachev seemed willing to grant 



202 




Nationalist demonstrators gather in 1989 in Baku's 
central square, Azerbaydzhan Republic. 
Young men in Yerevan, Armenian Republic, raise their 
fists to protest service in the Soviet armed forces. 

Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 



203 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

extensive concessions to the small Baltic nationalities, he was much 
less inclined to allow them for the much more numerous Ukrain- 
ians, whose natural, agricultural, and industrial resources have been 
vital to the Soviet Union and whose size has contributed signifi- 
cantly to the country's large Slavic majority. Ukrainian nation- 
alists were viewed by the regime as a severe threat, and Soviet 
authorities have used harsh measures against Ukrainian national 
and religious leaders. Nevertheless, a democratic national move- 
ment gained momentum in the late 1980s. It was particularly strong 
in the western regions of the Ukrainian Republic, where the popu- 
lation had not been exposed as long to a policy of Russification 
as had the people of the eastern regions of the Ukrainian Repub- 
lic. A democratic front with a program similar to the Baltic popu- 
lar fronts, a Ukrainian cultural club to preserve Ukrainian culture 
and history, and an ecological movement have been formed and 
have gained an increasing following. The crucial issue for Ukrain- 
ians in the late 1980s was the use of the Ukrainian language as 
the official language of the republic and as the language of instruc- 
tion in the republic's schools. Ukrainians raised demands for trans- 
forming the Soviet Union into a voluntary confederation of free 
republics. 

Another important development in the Ukrainian Republic was 
the revived activity of the Ukrainian Catholic Church. Several 
bishops and clergy and thousands of believers of the illegal church 
appealed to the Supreme Soviet in 1988 for the church's legaliza- 
tion. Also, clergy and thousands of faithful began to defy the 
authorities by holding open religious services. 

Central Asian Nationalities 

National discontent in Soviet Central Asia erupted during the 
mid-1980s. The discontent began over the removal for corruption 
of the native CPSU first secretaries in the Kirgiz, Tadzhik, and 
Turkmen republics. When the CPSU first secretary of the Kazakh 
Republic was also ousted and replaced with an ethnic Russian in 
December 1986, however, an unprecedented two days of rioting 
followed, with a large number of casualties. The riots demonstrated 
the local population's resentment against Russians' occupying the 
most prestigious jobs in the republic, a grievance that was shared 
by the native populations of the other Central Asian republics. 
Other commonly held grievances of Central Asian nationalities in- 
cluded resentment against the government's decision to drop the 
diversion of Siberian rivers, which would have brought badly needed 
water to the area, and the continuous distortion of their national 
history by pro-Russian historians. 



204 



Nationalities and Religions 



Russians 

The rise of Russian nationalism was another notable develop- 
ment during the first years of Gorbachev's rule. Begun as a move- 
ment for preservation and restoration of historic monuments and 
for a more balanced treatment of the tsarist past, it increasingly 
assumed a politically conservative character. The chauvinistic, anti- 
Semitic, and xenophobic group called Pamiat (Memory) won con- 
siderable public support among Russians and official toleration in 
Moscow and Leningrad. In a more positive manifestation of Rus- 
sian nationalism, the government granted new visibility and pres- 
tige to the Russian Orthodox Church. The Russian Orthodox 
hierarchy was given favorable exposure in the Soviet media, and 
in 1988 the government sponsored celebrations in Moscow of the 
millennium of the adoption of Christianity in Kievan Rus'. The 
regime, in an unprecedented event, permitted the broadcast of a 
televised Easter Mass celebrated by the Russian Orthodox Church. 
It also handed over to the Russian Orthodox Church some of the 
most important shrines and hundreds of churches, many of which 
had previously belonged to Ukrainian religious denominations. 

Other Nationalities 

In the late 1980s, other nationalities, including the Belorussians, 
Moldavians, Georgians, and Jews, demanded that measures be 
taken to preserve their cultures and languages. Belorussians cen- 
tered their demands primarily on recognition of the Belorussian 
language as the official language of the republic. Moldavians asked 
the government to allow them to use the Latin alphabet, as do other 
Romanian speakers, while Georgians appealed for greater religious 
concessions. Soviet officials, meanwhile, had changed their policy 
toward Jews and were allowing greater numbers to emigrate. The 
Soviet press was also giving increased and positive coverage to Jew- 
ish cultural activity, and Soviet authorities had promised to per- 
mit the teaching of Hebrew and to allow the opening of a kosher 
restaurant in Moscow, a Jewish museum, and a Jewish library. 

* * * 

English-language sources on nationalities in the Soviet Union are 
abundant. The Handbook of Major Soviet Nationalities, edited by Zev 
Katz, provides a very good overview of the fifteen nationalities that 
have their own union republics, as well as the Tatars and the Jews. 
Stephen Rapawy's ' 'Census Data on Nationality Composition and 
Language Characteristics of the Soviet Population: 1959, 1970, and 



205 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

1979" and W. Ward Kingkade's "USSR: Estimates and Projec- 
tions of the Population by Major Nationality, 1979 to 2050" give 
comprehensive statistical analyses of the nationalities listed in the 
Soviet census of 1979. The Soviet government's Natsionalnyi sostav 
naseleniia, Chast' II gives data on the 1989 census. Excellent essays 
on various aspects of the nationality question and on particular na- 
tionalities in the Soviet Union can be found in The Last Empire, 
edited by Robert Conquest; in Soviet Nationality Policies and Prac- 
tices, edited by Jeremy R. Azrael; and in Soviet Nationality Problems, 
edited by Edward Allworth. The availability of English-language 
secondary sources on particular nationalities varies. The history, 
religion, culture, and demography of Soviet Muslims are covered 
in great detail in such recent works as Shirin Akiner's Islamic Peo- 
ples of the Soviet Union and Alexandre Bennigsen and S. Enders Wim- 
bush's Muslims of the Soviet Empire. Equally comprehensive is the 
treatment of Estonians in Toivo U. Raun's Estonia and the Estonians; 
of Kazakhs in Martha Brill Olcott's The Kazakhs; and of Tatars 
in Azade-Ayse Rorlich's The Volga Tatars and in Tatars of the Crimea, 
edited by Edward Allworth. Nora Levin's two- volume The Jews 
in the Soviet Union since 1917, Benjamin Pinkus's The Jews of the Soviet 
Union, and Mordechai Altshuler's Soviet Jewry since the Second World 
War are some of the available sources on Soviet Jewry. Orest 
Subtelny's Ukraine: A History is an excellent general treatment of 
the relationship between Ukrainians and Russians, while Jaroslaw 
Bilocerkowycz's Soviet Ukrainian Dissent is particularly valuable for 
the period since the 1960s. Alexander R. Alexiev's Dissent and 
Nationalism in the Soviet Baltic sets the scene for the stormy events 
that took place in the Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian repub- 
lics in the late 1980s. Few or no monographs are available in English 
on such major ethnic groups as Belorussians, Moldavians, Poles, 
and Germans or on the large number of smaller nationalities. 
Analyses of current developments regarding these and other Soviet 
nationalities are provided, however, by Radio Free Europe/Radio 
Liberty's weekly publication Report on the USSR. 

The status of various religions in the Soviet Union and their rela- 
tionship with the Soviet regime are treated extensively in such works 
as Eastern Christianity and Politics in the Twentieth Century, Cross and 
Commissar, and Religion and Nationalism in Soviet and East European 
Politics, all three edited by Pedro Ramet, as well as in Christianity 
and Government in Russia and the Soviet Union by Sergei Pushkarev, 
Vladimir Rusak, and Gleb Yakunin. John Anderson's Religion and 
the Soviet State deals primarily with religious repression in the 1980s 
and with Soviet authorities' varying treatment of the different 
religions. An analysis of the basis of Soviet atheism and a historical 



206 



Nationalities and Religions 



analysis of Soviet religious policy is provided in Dmitry V. Pospie- 
lovsky's A History of Marxist- Leninist Atheism and Soviet Antireligious 
Policies and Soviet Antireligious Campaigns and Persecutions. A detailed, 
extensive, and most readable account of Russian Orthodoxy can 
be found in Jane Ellis's The Russian Orthodox Church, while Bohdan 
R. Bociurkiw presents a clear and concise history of the Ukrainian 
Catholic Church and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox 
Church in his Ukrainian Churches under Soviet Rule. (For further in- 
formation and complete citations, see Bibliography.) 



207 



Chapter 5. Social Structure 



Statue commemorating an industrial worker and a collective farmer 



SINCE 1917 THE SOVIET UNION has transformed itself from 
a predominantly agricultural, rural, and developing-capitalist 
society into an industrial, urban, socialist (see Glossary) society. 
Its social structure developed from the imposition of a centralist, 
Marxist state on a geographically, ethnically, and culturally diverse 
population. 

Western sociologists generally categorized Soviet society into four 
major socio-occupational groupings: the political-governmental elite 
and cultural and scientific intelligentsia; white-collar workers; blue- 
collar workers; and peasants and other agricultural workers. Soviet 
ideology held that Soviet society consisted solely of two nonantago- 
nistic classes — workers and peasants. Those engaged in nonmanual 
labor (from bookkeepers to party functionaries) formed strata in 
both classes. 

Social position was determined not only by occupation but also 
by education, party membership, place of residence, and even na- 
tionality. Membership in the ruling group, the Communist Party 
of the Soviet Union (CPSU), aided career advancement. Those 
who worked full time for the party received political power, spe- 
cial privileges, and financial benefits. Social status increased the 
higher one was promoted in the party, but this power was derived 
from position and could neither be inherited from nor be bequeathed 
to relatives. 

Unlike in the West, private property played no role in social 
stratification, and income generally was a consequence of social 
position, not its determinant. In general, the higher the social po- 
sition, the greater the pay, benefits, access to scarce goods and ser- 
vices, and prestige. The Soviet regime glorified manual labor and 
often paid higher wages to certain types of skilled laborers than 
to many white-collar workers, including physicians, engineers, and 
teachers. These professionals, however, enjoyed higher social pres- 
tige than the better-paid laborers. Considerable differences existed 
among the country's various social and economic groups. Soviet 
statistics showed that the income for many occupations was not 
sufficient to support a family, even if both spouses worked. These 
statistics on income, however, did not take into account money 
or benefits derived from the unofficial economy, that is, the black 
market in goods and services. 

The social structure of the Soviet Union has shown some signs 
of immobility and self-perpetuation. Children of the political elite, 



211 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

intelligentsia, and white-collar workers had a better chance to receive 
university educations than those of unskilled laborers and agricul- 
tural workers. Most children of agricultural workers began their 
careers without higher education and remained at the same socio- 
occupational level as their parents. 

The largest official social organizations, such as the trade unions, 
youth organizations, and sports organizations, were tightly con- 
trolled by the state. Unofficial organizations, once banned, were 
becoming increasingly evident in the late 1980s. 

Under the Soviet Constitution, women possessed equal rights 
with men and were granted special benefits, such as paid maternity 
leave for child-bearing. At the same time, women as a group were 
overrepresented in the lower-paid occupations and underrepresented 
in high positions in the economy, government, and the party. If 
married, they performed most of the homemaking chores in addi- 
tion to their work outside the home. This overwork, coupled with 
crowded housing conditions, contributed to a high rate of divorce 
and abortion, which was higher in the European part of the coun- 
try than in the Asian part. 

Families in the southern and Islamic parts of the country were 
larger than those in the northern and non-Islamic sections. The 
increased size reflected the more traditional Islamic cultural norms 
and the inclusion of other relatives, particularly grandparents, in 
families. 

Formation of Soviet Society 

From 1861 to early 1917, the population of the Russian Empire 
officially consisted of six social categories: the nobility, clergy, dis- 
tinguished citizens (professionals), merchants, townspeople (a catch- 
all term for city artisans, clerks, and workers not included in the 
other groups), and peasants. The intelligentsia, consisting of those 
who created and disseminated culture and often served as social 
critics, was not considered a separate class but rather, as one scholar 
put it, "a state of mind." 

The upper level of the nobility and military officers were fur- 
ther hierarchically ordered according to the Table of Ranks issued 
by Peter the Great in 1722, which based rank on service to the 
tsar rather than on birth or seniority. This table continued in use, 
with some modifications, until abolished in 1917. The tsar was at 
the apex of this system, from which Jews, Muslims, and many of 
the smaller non-Russian nationalities were excluded. 

The peasants, who were liberated in 1861 from serfdom and 
obligatory service on private or government lands, were at the bot- 
tom of the pre- 19 17 social pyramid. Before 1905 the government 



212 



Social Structure 



required peasants to obtain permission from the local peasant 
community — the mir (see Glossary) — before leaving the land. 
Although much of the peasant migration before the Bolshevik Revo- 
lution was seasonal, some permanent migration into the cities did 
occur, especially during the 1890s and after 1906, when the peasants 
were freed from obligations to the mir. The move from village to 
city was naturally accompanied by the move from farm to factory. 
Between 1895 and 1917, the factory labor force tripled to more 
than 3 million as Russia began to industrialize. The urban popu- 
lation of Russia increased from 9 percent in 1860 to 16 percent 
in 1910. Traditionally, urban life in Russia had been connected 
with government administration; but at the turn of the century, 
it began to be tied to industry. 

The revolutions of 1917 overturned the old social order. In that 
year, the new Bolshevik (see Glossary) government nationalized 
private estates and church lands, and it abolished class distinctions 
and privileges. Workers' councils (soviets — see Glossary) took over 
the operation of factories and were given the right to set produc- 
tion goals and remuneration levels. Banking was declared a state 
monopoly. Thus, the economic foundations of the old social order 
crumbled. The new ruling elite, the Bolshevik-Marxist intelligentsia, 
drew its support from what it called the proletariat — workers, land- 
less peasants, and employees — while the formerly privileged — the 
clergy, nobility, high-ranking civil servants, and merchants — found 
themselves stripped of their property and even hindered in obtaining 
housing, education, and jobs. The Bolsheviks lifted some of the 
restrictions a short while later when they realized that they needed 
the professional knowledge and skills of some former members of 
the elite to operate the government and the economy. Yet the chil- 
dren of the formerly privileged were barred from educational and 
career opportunities for nearly two decades after the Bolshevik 
Revolution. 

9 Vladimir I. Lenin's nationalization of the land, factories, and 
financial institutions destroyed the prerevolutionary social system. 
In turn, Joseph V. Stalin's forced collectivization of agriculture, 
which began in 1929, annihilated the more prosperous peasantry 
during the early 1930s, while his industrialization program de- 
stroyed the new elite class that had developed as a result of Lenin's 
New Economic Policy (NEP — see Glossary). Seeking political scape- 
goats in the 1930s, the government directed widespread purges 
against the technical experts operating fledgling industries. In the 
late 1930s, Stalin's purges also destroyed much of the military and 
party elite. 

During the 1930s, the social system adapted to the industrializ- 
ing economy. Stalin ended the official leveling of incomes in 1931 , 



213 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

when he announced that needed increases in production could be 
effected only by paying more to skilled workers and the intelligent- 
sia. The new system provided incentives for workers and partly 
ended legal discrimination against some of the former privileged 
classes. Official discrimination against the former "exploiting 
classes" (nobles, priests, and capitalists) was abolished by the 1936 
constitution. 

Other events at that time reflected Stalin's move away from the 
egalitarian ideas that the regime had promoted during its first de- 
cade. In 1934 egalitarianism itself was repudiated, in 1935 mili- 
tary ranks were introduced, and in 1939 the Stalin Prize was created 
to reward favored artists. In 1940 school fees were reestablished 
for the final year of secondary school and for universities, and in 
1943 and 1945 inheritance laws were made more favorable to inheri- 
tors. 

From Stalin's death in 1953 to the late 1970s, an expanding Soviet 
economy continued to provide ample opportunity for career and 
social advancement. The state increased incomes of and benefits 
for the lowest-paid strata of society while providing more privileges 
for the elite. Beginning in the 1960s, however, access to higher edu- 
cation became increasingly restricted, thus impeding social advance- 
ment by this means. In the early 1980s, a stagnant economy reduced 
overall social mobility, a situation that highlighted differences 
among social groups. 

In 1989 Marxism-Leninism, the official Soviet ideology, held 
that social classes have been historically defined by their relation- 
ship to the means of production, i.e., land and factories. The offi- 
cial view was that Soviet society represented "a new and distinctly 
different human community, free from traditional class antagonisms 
and contradictions." Soviet society supposedly consisted of two 
classes, workers and peasants, with those who engaged in non- 
manual or intellectual labor forming a stratum within both (see 
table 17, Appendix A). These two classes were considered to be 
nonantagonistic because neither exploited the other and because 
they jointly owned the means of production. 

Stratification in the Soviet Union, according to Soviet officials, 
was based only on merit and not on the ownership of private 
property. Privilege proceeded from one's position in society and 
not the reverse. Soviet ideology held that this stratification would 
disappear in the future as Soviet society progressed from social- 
ism to communism. In contrast, capitalist society, according to 
Soviet ideology, was torn by class conflict between the capitalists, 
or those who owned the means of production, and the workers. 
The capitalists ruthlessly exploited the workers, who had only their 



214 



Newlyweds at the Lenin Mausoleum, Moscow 
Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 

labor to sell. This exploitation, Marxist- Leninists believed, created 
class antagonisms and inevitable conflict. 

The official ideology ignored some very profound cleavages in 
Soviet society, and it created some that, in fact, had not existed. 
For example, despite overwhelming similarities in income, life- style, 
education, and other determinants of social position, only those 
employed in agricultural work on a collective farm (see Glossary) 
were considered to be peasants, while those employed in agricul- 
ture on a state farm (see Glossary) were called workers. Moreover, 
a bookkeeper on a collective farm, a schoolteacher, and an armed 
forces general, all of whom performed mental labor, were considered 
to belong to the nonmanual labor strata, often and imprecisely called 
the intelligentsia. This classification also failed to take into account 
the role political power and party membership played in social 
stratification within a one-party state. If under capitalism power 
flows from ownership, then under communism power confers the 
effect of ownership because political power in the Soviet Union 
determined who controlled collective property. 

Stratification of Soviet Society 

Western authorities on the Soviet Union divide Soviet society 
into various groupings or strata based primarily on occupation but 



215 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

also on education, pay and remuneration, place of residence, na- 
tionality, party membership, life- style, and, to a lesser extent, 
religion. Because the state owned virtually all property, private 
ownership played no role in social stratification. The influence of 
private enterprise was negligible because of its small-scale and often 
tenuous nature. Political decisions, not market forces, determined 
who had access to resources and therefore played the predominant 
role in social stratification. 

Socio-Occupational Groupings 

Western analysts have divided Soviet society into four broad 
socio-occupational groupings. At the apex of this social pyramid 
were the elite or intelligentsia, followed by white-collar workers, 
blue-collar workers, and, last, agricultural workers. 

The Elite 

The uppermost socio-occupational group, the elite, included lead- 
ing party and state officials; high-ranking military, Committee for 
State Security (Komitet gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti — KGB), and 
diplomatic personnel; directors of the largest enterprises (see Glos- 
sary) and of the largest educational, research, and medical estab- 
lishments; and leading members of the cultural intelligentsia, e.g., 
academics, editors, writers, and artists. These groups received the 
most income and had access to goods and services that those lower 
in the social hierarchy found difficult or even impossible to obtain. 
Unlike Westerners, members of the Soviet elite were not allowed 
to amass great wealth and bequeath it to their offspring. When a 
member of the elite died, even luxury items such as a dacha (a 
country cottage) or an automobile could revert to the state. 

White-Collar Workers 

Soviet sociologists have grouped many of those who perform non- 
manual labor into a category comparable to Western * 'white-collar 
workers." The approximately 25 million members of this group 
ranged from specialists who possessed high educational qualifica- 
tions to administrators and clerks. The group included the majority 
of party and government bureaucrats, teachers, scientists, schol- 
ars, physicians, military and police officers, artists, writers, ac- 
tors, and business managers. In the late 1980s, about 30 percent 
of white-collar workers belonged to the CPSU; the more presti- 
gious occupations within this group had the highest percentage of 
CPSU members. White-collar workers on the average received 
higher wages and more privileges than the average Soviet worker, 



216 



Social Structure 



although physicians and schoolteachers who were just starting out 
earned less than the national average for all employees. 

Blue-Collar Workers and Manual Laborers 

The category of blue-collar workers included those who per- 
formed manual labor in industrial enterprises as well as those on 
collective farms and state farms engaged in transport, construc- 
tion, and other nonfarming activities. In the late 1980s, blue-collar 
workers and their families made up about two-thirds of the coun- 
try's population. 

The CPSU has always loudly proclaimed blue-collar workers to 
be the backbone of the state and the most honored segment of 
society. Although newspaper accounts and photographs glorified 
their labor accomplishments, blue-collar workers were masters in 
name only. Only 7 percent belonged to the CPSU, the ruling group, 
and their pay and benefits were close to the national average and 
considerably less than those of the elite. 

Agricultural Workers 

Agricultural workers, on both state farms and collective farms, 
formed the bottom layer of the social structure in 1989. They were 
the least well paid and the least educated, and they were severely 
underrepresented in the CPSU. Most agricultural workers per- 
formed unspecialized labor. Where specialization existed, it did 
so only to the extent that raising poultry or livestock demanded 
greater skill than growing crops. In general, mechanized agricul- 
ture benefited men more than women because men tended to oper- 
ate the tractors while women continued to perform manual work. 

Although all farmers cultivated state-owned farmland, in 1989 
farm workers were divided into two categories. State farmers were 
technically employees of the state. Working with government-owned 
machinery and seed, they received wages from the state for their 
labor. In contrast, collective farmers theoretically owned their 
machinery and seed and shared the proceeds from the produce sold. 

Other Determinants of Social Position 

Social position in the Soviet Union in 1 989 was determined not 
only by occupation but also by le^vel of education, party member- 
ship, place of residence (urban or rural), and nationality. Educa- 
tion level and party affiliation were by far the most important 
nonoccupational determinants. 

Education 

Education was the chief prerequisite for social mobility, play- 
ing an important role in determining one's occupation and hence 



217 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

one's position in society. Few opportunities for advancement ex- 
isted for individuals who lacked formal education. In general, the 
person who had an incomplete secondary education, that is, left 
school after eight years, received only a factory apprenticeship or 
an unskilled job. The person who completed secondary education, 
that is, finished school through the eleventh year, was placed in 
a skilled or perhaps a low-level white-collar position, depending 
on the type of secondary school attended (see Institutions of Learn- 
ing, ch. 6). Professional and bureaucratic positions required an even 
higher level of education. 

Access to higher education, however, was not equal for all so- 
cial groups. In general, the higher the parents' status in the social 
hierarchy, the better were the children's chances of entering a 
university. This advantage was only partially attributable to the 
parents' better connections and influence. Children from these 
families also received better primary and secondary educations, 
which made it more likely that they would pass difficult university 
entrance examinations. In addition, their parents could more easily 
afford tutoring for these examinations if it were needed. They could 
also better afford the expense of school tuition in the absence of 
a stipend. Because of their better educational backgrounds, the chil- 
dren of white-collar workers and the elite were more likely to ob- 
tain higher positions in the social structure than the offspring of 
agricultural and blue-collar workers. Since education was the chief 
means of social advancement in the Soviet Union, this unequal 
opportunity greatly hindered upward social mobility and tended 
to perpetuate the intelligentsia and political elite. 

Party Membership 

Membership in the CPSU for both political and nonpolitical 
careers was absolutely essential for advancement above a certain 
level in society. All of the key positions of power in the Soviet Union 
were subject to the nomenklatura (see Glossary), the list of positions 
over which a given party committee had the right of confirmation. 
Power and authority increased the higher one rose in the party, 
as did monetary and nonmonetary benefits. Also, party member- 
ship often brought an opportunity denied to most Soviet citizens — 
the right to travel abroad. 

Nationality 

In 1989 Russians possessed an inherent social advantage in the 
Soviet Union. They, and to a lesser extent other Slavs, dominated 
the central government, party, economy, military, and security hier- 
archies. Possessing a higher educational level and a higher rate of 



218 



Social Structure 



party membership than most of the non-Russian nationalities, Rus- 
sians also were overrepresented in skilled labor, white-collar, and 
elite positions. The Russian language was the official language of 
the state and the language of interethnic communication, which gave 
an advantage to Russians over non-Russians, who needed to master 
Russian as a second language for socioeconomic advancement. Non- 
Russians also generally possessed a lower rate of urbanization than 
Russians, who thus enjoyed better access to higher-paying employ- 
ment and to education institutions. 

Jews, as well, were overrepresented in certain areas of the arts, 
science, academe, and certain professions; but this predominance 
did not stem from an inherent advantage, as with the Russians, 
but rather from achievement. Unlike Russians, Jews were subject 
to discriminatory quotas for admission to academe and some profes- 
sions and, according to one Western scholar, were excluded from 
foreign trade organizations. 

Within the non-Russian republics and smaller administrative 
divisions, local ethnic hierarchies or ' 'mafias" existed, especially 
in those regions where the clan system was still pervasive, such as 
the Caucasus and Central Asia. These patronage systems flourished 
during the era of Leonid I. Brezhnev, but Mikhail S. Gorbachev 
has attempted to weaken their economic and political power. 

Intermarriage among nationalities has produced social mobil- 
ity, particularly in the case of offspring, who legally must identify 
themselves by the nationality of either their mother or their father. 
In this case, upward mobility has occurred if the children have 
chosen the larger or more dominant nationality in the area, espe- 
cially if it were Russian. 

Benefits of Social Position 

In the Soviet Union income and related benefits generally de- 
rived from one's social position and not the reverse. Ordinarily, 
the higher one's social position in the Soviet Union, the higher one's 
total benefits, which included not only better wages but also in- 
creased access to scarce goods and services. Access to goods and 
services more accurately reflected social status than cash income 
because social groups did not have equal access to them and be- 
cause perpetual shortages of goods and services diminished the use- 
fulness of cash earned. Other benefits, such as government subsidies 
for transportation, food, and housing, were not obtained by virtue 
of one's social status but were equally enjoyed by all. Occupational 
prestige appeared to be related to both income and occupation, 
although some professional positions, despite their higher prestige, 



219 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

were worth less in wages than certain jobs requiring skilled man- 
ual labor. 

Monetary Compensation 

Within the general pay hierarchy, the order, going from the 
highest to the lowest level of pay, was as follows: the upper crust 
of the political and artistic elites; the professional, intellectual, and 
artistic intelligentsia; the most highly skilled workers; white-collar 
workers and the more prosperous farmers; the average workers; 
and, at the bottom, the average agricultural laborers and workers 
with few skills. The policy of wage differentiation, put into practice 
in the 1930s, has continued into the late 1980s. Western scholars, 
however, have disagreed about the exact level of such differentia- 
tion. During the 1970s, the salary ratio of the highest 10 percent 
of all wage earners to the lowest 10 percent has been estimated as 
ranging from four to one to ten to one. A leading French expert 
on Soviet society, Basile Kerblay, has stated that within the same 
enterprise the salaries of senior executives ranged from ten to fifty 
times that of workers. Most industries had six grades of pay, and 
most workers had incomes near to but not at the bottom of the 
pay scale (see table 18, Appendix A). 

As a group, leaders in the government, party, and military 
received the highest pay. In February 1989, the editor of a Soviet 
journal admitted to a Western reporter that the top marshals and 
generals in the Ministry of Defense earned the highest salaries, as 
much as 2,000 rubles (for value of the ruble — see Glossary) per 
month. Gorbachev, the head of the Soviet state and the CPSU, 
was said to receive 1,500 rubles a month, while other Politburo 
members earned 1,200 to 1,500 rubles a month. Another Soviet 
official has acknowledged that entertainers and other artists with 
nationwide recognition received about 1,000 rubles a month, as 
did seasonal construction workers, whose work sent them to vari- 
ous areas of the country. Western sources have estimated that the 
government leaders at the republic level earned 625 rubles a month. 
Those receiving high incomes often were awarded extra pay in the 
form of a ' ' thirteenth month" or ' 'holiday increment." 

At the lower end of the pay scale were those workers employed 
in what one Western sociologist called the "traditionally neglected 
economic areas, ' ' which not only paid lower wages but also awarded 
smaller bonuses and fringe benefits. In the 1980s, an estimated 7 
million people worked in low-paying industrial sectors, such as light 
industries (textiles, clothing, and footwear) and food processing. 
Another 30 million workers were employed in low-paying jobs in- 
volving retail trade, food service, state farming, education, public 



220 



Social Structure 



amenities, and health care. Those who performed unskilled sup- 
portive functions, the so-called "assistant workers" and "junior 
service personnel," such as janitors, watchmen, and messengers, 
also received low wages, as did office personnel in all sectors. And 
although the income of collective farmers had improved greatly since 
the 1960s, their average monthly income in 1986 was only 83 per- 
cent of the average wage of 195.6 rubles. 

Not all individuals in positions requiring higher or specialized 
education were paid more than those requiring less education, even 
though they received greater prestige. Low-paid specialists included 
engineers, veterinarians, agronomists, accountants, legal advisers, 
translators, schoolteachers, librarians, organizers of clubs and cul- 
tural events, musicians, and even physicians. Women dominated 
these professions (see table 19, Appendix A). In 1988 the average 
monthly wage of medical personnel who had completed secondary 
or higher education was 160 rubles, or 82 percent of the average 
wage. 

Lack of official statistics made it difficult to determine the num- 
ber of Soviet citizens living in poverty. Until Gorbachev assumed 
power in 1985, Soviet officials claimed that poverty could not exist 
in their country, although they did admit to the problem of "under- 
provisioning" (maloobespechennost 7 ). In the late 1980s, however, 
Soviet economists acknowledged that 20 percent of the population 
lived under the poverty threshold, which was estimated at 254 rubles 
a month for an urban family of four. Mervyn Matthews, a British 
expert on Soviet poverty, estimated that 40 percent of blue-collar 
workers and their dependents lived below the poverty threshold. 
Matthews calculated that in 1979 the poverty threshold was 95 per- 
cent of the average income of a family of four that had two parents 
working outside the home. Similar figures for the late 1980s were 
unavailable in the West. Many pensioners likewise appear to fall 
under the official poverty level. The 56.8 million pensioners in 1986 
received an average of only 38 percent of the average wage, while 
pensioners from collective farms averaged only 25 percent (see 
Welfare, ch. 6). 

The official statistics reflected income obtained from the state- 
controlled economy. They did not include income that was obtained 
legally or illegally outside of the official economy (see Nature of 
the National Economy, ch. 11). Unofficial income included earn- 
ings from such varied sources as private agricultural production, 
goods produced on official time with company resources and then 
sold privately, and profit realized from illegal currency exchanges. 
Western specialists had little information on the exact extent of this 
activity but acknowledged that it was widespread, especially in 



221 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Soviet Central Asia and the Caucasus. However, the extent to which 
income derived from unofficial sources raised the per capita in- 
come of the average Soviet citizen in 1989 was undetermined. 

Noncash Benefits and Access to Goods and Services 

Besides wages, citizens received two types of noncash benefits. 
The first, artificially low prices for food, transportation, and hous- 
ing, amounted to approximately 42 percent of the average salary 
in 1986. These subsidies and other types of transfer payments were 
available to all and were not awarded according to status. 

Other types of noncash benefits were allotted according to so- 
cial position. For example, high-ranking party and government offi- 
cials received such benefits as chauffeurs, domestic staff, living 
quarters (size and quality dependent on status), priority tickets for 
entertainment and travel, special waiting rooms at public places, 
and passes allowing them to jump lines to make purchases. As a 
rule, those receiving the least pay received the fewest noncash 
benefits. This group included unskilled workers, lower level white- 
collar and service workers, farm workers, many pensioners, and 
the temporarily unemployed. Farm workers, who generally received 
the lowest pay, were able to supplement their incomes with the pro- 
ceeds from their private agricultural plots. 

Social position also determined access to goods and services, an 
important benefit in a country where, as Matthews has written, 
" Deprivation is a recognized but unpublicized feature of . . . life." 
Those in the party, military, security, and cultural elites had the 
right to shop at special restricted stores that required either for- 
eign currency or so-called certificate rubles. In such stores, imported 
goods or goods not available in the public markets could be pur- 
chased. The average citizen, in contrast, was obligated to stand 
in line for hours at public markets where many goods, including 
clothing and foodstuffs, were either in short supply or unavailable. 
Some occupations, however, bestowed privileges that were not offi- 
cially recognized or that offered opportunities for blat (see Glos- 
sary). For example, managers of businesses and business activities 
had higher standards of living than their positions implied because 
they could demand special favors in exchange for the scarce goods 
and services they controlled. In turn, shop personnel possessed low 
occupational prestige but enjoyed high, albeit unofficial and some- 
times illegal, fringe benefits. In addition, some blue-collar occu- 
pations could be put into this group. 

Social position also played a significant role in the allocation of 
living space. The perennial shortage of urban housing meant that 



222 



Social Structure 



insufficient individual apartments existed for those who desired 
them. Income played only a small role in housing distribution be- 
cause the state owned most of the housing and charged artificially 
low rents. (A small number of cooperative apartments were sold, 
but these were beyond the means of most people.) The elite received 
the most spacious and best quality housing, often as a job benefit. 
The elite also possessed more influential friends who could help 
them bypass the usually long waiting periods for apartments. The 
average family, in contrast, either shared an apartment with other 
families, using the bathroom and kitchen as common areas, or lived 
in a very small private apartment. A 1980 article in a prestigious 
Soviet journal on economics stated that about 20 percent of all urban 
families (53 percent in Leningrad) lived in shared apartments, 
although for the country as a whole this percentage was decreas- 
ing in the late 1980s. The housing situation for young unmarried, 
and often unskilled, workers was worse. They often could find liv- 
ing space only in a crowded hostel operated by the enterprise in 
which they worked or in the corner of a room in a shared apart- 
ment. Until they could find their own apartment, young married 
people often lived with one set of parents. Housing in rural areas 
was more spacious than that found in urban apartments, but it 
usually had few amenities. 

Other forms of unequal access that favored those of higher so- 
cial status included better holiday facilities, better medical care, 
and better education for children. The special schools that taught 
advanced languages, arts, and sciences were generally attended by 
the children of the privileged. Official state honors, both civilian 
and military, also brought benefits in the form of better travel, lodg- 
ing, and holiday accommodations. 

Occupational Prestige 

In surveys questioning Soviet citizens about occupational pres- 
tige, professional and technical positions, especially those in science, 
medicine, and the arts, ranked high consistently; unskilled manu- 
al labor, agricultural labor, and sales and service jobs consistently 
ranked low. In general, Soviet citizens viewed the scientific profes- 
sions as the most prestigious. While manual labor was glorified 
by the party and the press, it was not pursued and was even looked 
down upon. Nonmanual labor was considered cleaner, less tiring, 
and more prestigious. Agricultural jobs were considered less desira- 
ble than industrial jobs even in cases where the qualifications re- 
quired for the job were equivalent. Urban work was considered 
more desirable than rural work, which was considered backbreak- 
ing, dirty, and offering few possibilities for advancement. The city 



223 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

also offered more amenities than the countryside, where most of 
the underpaid, unskilled jobs were located. 

Earnings and benefits seemed to play a key, although not ex- 
clusive, role in this social ranking. Generally, nonmanual workers 
received higher wages than manual laborers, but pay scales often 
overlapped, and many exceptions existed. For example, the low- 
prestige jobs, such as unskilled manual or nonmanual labor, were 
low paying, but not all of those in the high-prestige positions 
received high wages. Medical doctors, for instance, were highly 
esteemed, but their income was not high. Low prestige was attached 
to mid-level white-collar jobs because of their low pay and reduced 
benefits; coal miners, in contrast, had greater prestige because of 
good pay and benefits. 

Urban-Rural Cleavage 

The difference between urban and rural life in the Soviet Union 
has been called by Basile Kerblay ' 'the most obvious gulf within 
Soviet society." This gulf remained despite the rapid urbaniza- 
tion that the society has undergone since the Bolshevik Revolu- 
tion and the urbanization of rural life itself. Between 1917 and 1987, 
the urban population increased by 156.9 million; in contrast, the 
rural population decreased by 38.2 million. By 1968 the Soviet 
Union had become more urban than rural (see table 20, Appen- 
dix A). A Soviet village, officially defined as a community with 
fewer than 2,000 inhabitants, had, on the average, 225 inhabitants. 

Differences in Life-Styles 

Rural dwellers faced culture shock when moving from the coun- 
tryside to the city. Until they were assimilated into their new way 
of life, they were marked by their dress, speech, and behavior. The 
rural existence they left behind was slower paced and socially and 
economically more homogeneous than life in the cities. They no 
longer received essential services, such as housing, medical care, 
job training, and entertainment, from their village communities 
but rather from their urban employers. Their new urban neigh- 
bors not only saved less of their wages each month but also spent 
an average of three times as much on leisure and culture. 

The difference between urban and rural society was also reflected 
in housing conditions. Rural inhabitants traditionally lived in 
detached houses and had access to private garden plots. These rural 
gardens provided produce either for home consumption or for sale. 
City dwellers, in contrast, did not usually have this extra source 
of income. And although rural housing sometimes lacked indoor 
plumbing and other features of urban housing, it was roomier. 



224 



Ukrainian thatched-roof cottage at the Museum 
of Folk Architecture, Kiev, Ukrainian Republic 
Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 

One major legal difference between urban and rural dwellers 
disappeared in 1976, when collective farmers were issued internal 
passports (see Glossary) required for travel outside of their partic- 
ular district. Before 1976 collective farmers were obliged to obtain 
the permission of employers before such travel was allowed. 

Structure of Rural Society 

Rural society reflected the predominance of agriculture as the 
major employer and the CPSU as the sole political organization. 
In 1989 the village community was controlled by an economic in- 
stitution, the farm (collective or state), and an administrative one, 
the village soviet (sel'sovet). These organizations employed the elite 
of rural society, at the very top of which were the ' 'heads' ' (golovki), 
who were either party members or party appointees. Golovki in- 
cluded the party secretary for the raion (see Glossary), the chair- 
man of the collective farm or state farm (in the 1980s most were 
university- trained specialists, but a few were those who had learned 
on the job), the chairman of the sel'sovet, and the secretaries of the 
party cells in the state farm or collective farm. Men occupied most 
of the top positions on collective farms. 



225 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

The rural nonpolitical elite consisted of agronomists, veterinary 
surgeons, engineers, and schoolteachers. Their life- style resembled 
that of urban dwellers. Among this group, rural society held 
schoolteachers in high esteem, in part because they played a role 
in selecting which of their students could continue their studies and 
thus have increased opportunity for upward social mobility. For 
rural women, regional teacher-training colleges offered the best 
chance to rise in the social hierarchy. Despite the relatively high 
esteem in which they were held, teachers were poorly paid and, 
in general, were forced to maintain private garden plots to sup- 
port themselves. 

An emerging group in the rural social structure consisted of 
agricultural machinery specialists. This group included truck drivers 
or other heavy machinery drivers and mechanics who had com- 
pleted their secondary education and whose income was higher than 
many white-collar workers. 

Workers who remained in the countryside had fewer avenues 
for upward mobility than did urban dwellers. Tractor drivers, for 
example, were more upwardly mobile than most rural laborers. 
Managers and white-collar workers employed in rural regions were 
generally brought in from urban areas. 

Decreasing Social Differences 

In the late 1980s, rural depopulation and modernization were 
eroding those aspects of rural society that distinguished it from its 
urban counterpart. Depopulation resulted from the migration of 
young people to the city to study and acquire a trade. This migra- 
tion was especially apparent in the European part of the Russian 
Republic and in the Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian republics, 
where annually 2 to 3 percent of the rural population moved from 
the countryside to the city. (In Soviet Central Asia, the reverse 
was true; the rural population continued to increase because of high 
birthrates and a reluctance to move out of the countryside.) The 
loss of young people made rural society older, and because of the 
loss of males in World War II, the older age-groups were pre- 
dominantly female (see fig. 8). 

Concurrent with the increased flight from rural areas was the 
urbanization of members of the rural areas themselves. The govern- 
ment, for example, merged many villages to form urban- style 
centers for rural areas. Farming itself had become more profes- 
sional, requiring a higher level of education or training obtainable 
only in cities. Additionally, in the late 1980s farming became more 
industrialized as rural processing industries were developed, as stock 
breeding become more industrialized, and as more agro-industrial 



226 



Social Structure 



organizations were formed. The modernization of rural areas de- 
veloped unevenly, however; modernization was more evident in 
the Baltic area and the fertile northwest Caucasus and less evident 
in the southeast Caucasus and Central Asia. Rural areas also ex- 
perienced a constant influx of urbanites: people who had moved 
to the cities but returned to visit, urban residents vacationing in 
the countryside, and seasonal workers and students mobilized for 
the harvest. During each harvest, the government organized about 
900,000 city dwellers and 400,000 to 600,000 students to assist in 
gathering crops. All of these factors lessened the decreasing, al- 
though still profound, distinction between urban and rural society. 

The reverse process — the "ruralization" of urban society — has 
not occurred in the Soviet Union, despite the rural origin of many 
unskilled urban laborers. The percentage of rural-born unskilled 
workers in the urban work force was declining in the 1980s as more 
urban-born workers reached working age. This process also was 
occurring in industry, where the percentage of urban workers with 
peasant backgrounds was greater among older workers. Workers 
in skilled industrial positions generally had urban backgrounds. 

Social Mobility 

Social mobility, or an individual's movement upward or down- 
ward through the strata of society, has been facilitated in the Soviet 
Union through changes in occupation, marriage, education, and 
political or even ethnic affiliation. Nepotism and cronyism have 
also played a significant role in social advancement. In addition, 
social mobility has stemmed from geographic mobility, such as the 
move of an agricultural worker to the city to work in industry. For 
non-Russians, social mobility has also involved learning the Rus- 
sian language and culture. 

Given the centralized and bureaucratic official structure of the 
Soviet Union in 1989, citizens could not legally become wealthy 
or achieve high social status outside official channels. Therefore, 
the paths for advancement remained fairly fixed, and an individual's 
upward progress was usually slow. In the past, political purges and 
an expanding economy had created positions for the ambitious. 
The faltering of the economy in the mid-1980s, however, restricted 
upward mobility, and as of 1989 Gorbachev's attempt to restruc- 
ture the economy had not created new opportunities for social mo- 
bility. 

In the 1980s, downward mobility was less of a problem than it 
had been during the Stalin era, when high-level government 
bureaucrats were demoted to menial jobs. However, even though 
elite positions had become more secure under Brezhnev, children 



227 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

of the elite who lacked higher education did not necessarily retain 
their parents' social position. 

In 1989 upward social mobility tended to be "inter-generational" 
(advancement to a social position higher than the one occupied by 
parents) rather than "intra- generational" (advancement to a higher 
social position during one's own adult life). Thus, social mobility 
had slowed down. Soviet studies from the 1960s to the mid-1980s 
also showed that children of manual laborers were less likely to ob- 
tain high-level educational qualifications than children of non- 
manual laborers. Nearly four- fifths of the children of unskilled 
manual laborers began their work careers at the same social level 
as their parents. 

Social Organizations 

Social organizations were strictly controlled by the party and 
government except for a small number of unofficial groups that 
continued to be tolerated by the authorities in the late 1980s. The 
largest social organizations in the country were the trade unions 
and DOSAAF (see Glossary); next in line were the youth and sports 
organizations. 

Trade Unions 

The trade union system consisted of thirty unions organized by 
occupational branch. Including about 732,000 locals and 135 mil- 
lion members in 1984, unions encompassed almost all Soviet em- 
ployees with the exception of some 4 to 5 million collective farmers. 
Enterprises employing twenty-five or more people had locals, and 
membership was compulsory. Dues were about 1 percent of a per- 
son's salary. The Ail-Union Central Council of Trade Unions 
served as an umbrella organization for the thirty branch unions 
and was by far the largest public organization in the Soviet Union. 

Like the CPSU, the trade unions operated on the principle of 
democratic centralism (see Glossary), and they consisted of hier- 
archies of elected bodies from the central governing level down to 
the factory and local committees. Union membership influenced 
union operations only at the local level, where an average of 60 
percent of a union's central committee members were rank-and- 
file workers. 

Unlike labor unions in the West, Soviet trade unions were, in 
fact, actually governmental organizations whose chief aim was not 
to represent workers but to further the goals of management, 
government, and the CPSU. As such, they were partners of man- 
agement in attempting to promote labor discipline, worker morale, 
and productivity. Unions organized "socialist competitions" and 



228 



Pool players in Baku, Azerbaydzhan Republic 
Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 

awarded prizes for fulfilling quotas. They also distributed welfare 
benefits, operated cultural and sports facilities, issued passes to 
health and vacation centers, oversaw factory and local housing con- 
struction, provided catering services, and awarded bonuses and 
prepaid vacations. 

Although unions in the Soviet Union primarily promoted produc- 
tion interests, they had some input regarding production plans, 
capital improvements in factories, local housing construction, and 
remuneration agreements with management. Unions also were em- 
powered to protect workers against bureaucratic and managerial 
arbitrariness, to ensure that management adhered to collective 
agreements, and to protest unsafe working conditions. After the 
Polish labor union movement, Solidarity, had achieved some suc- 
cess in Poland, Soviet labor unions became more vocal in protect- 
ing workers' interests. 

Youth Organizations 

To instill communist values into the younger generation, the 
CPSU employed a system of nationwide youth organizations: the 
Young Octobrists, the Pioneers, and the Komsomol (see Glossary). 
Of the three organizations, the Komsomol was, in the late 1980s, 
by far the largest and most active organization, with over 40 million 



229 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

members ranging in age from fourteen to twenty-eight. The Kom- 
somol's structure mirrored the party's structure, from its primary 
units in schools and workplaces to its first secretary. The congress 
of the Komsomol met every five years and elected a central com- 
mittee, which in turn elected a bureau and secretariat to direct the 
organization's day-to-day affairs between central committee meet- 
ings. Komsomol members were encouraged to take part in politi- 
cal activities of the CPSU and to assist in industrial projects and 
harvesting. Most important, its members received preference for 
entry into higher education, employment, and the CPSU. 

The other two youth groups, the Young Octobrists and the Pio- 
neers, were organizations devoted to the political indoctrination 
of children through age fifteen. The Young Octobrists prepared 
children ages six to nine for entry into the Pioneers, which in turn 
prepared them for entry into the Komsomol beginning at age four- 
teen. 

Sports Organizations 

In 1989 the Soviet Union had thirty-six sports societies, consist- 
ing of an urban and rural society for each of the fifteen union repub- 
lics and six all-union (see Glossary) societies. All but two of these 
organizations were operated by the trade unions. The State Com- 
mittee for Physical Culture and Sports served as the umbrella or- 
ganization for these societies. Each society built its own sports 
facilities, secured equipment for its members, and hired a perma- 
nent staff of coaches and other personnel. Each held local and all- 
union championships for various sports, and each society's teams 
played against the teams of other societies. Although in theory the 
Soviet Union had no professional sports, each society supported 
athletes who played sports full time. Furthermore, the best, or 
4 'master sportsmen," received additional pay from the State Com- 
mittee for Physical Culture and Sports. 

Gender and Family Roles 

In 1989 the Soviet Union resembled other modernized Europe- 
an societies in terms of divorce rates, roles of men and women in 
marriage, and family size, structure, and function. The twin pres- 
sures of urbanization and industrialization have radically changed 
gender and family relations in the Soviet Union since 1917. These 
changes, however, were less evident among the non-Russian popu- 
lations of Soviet Central Asia and the Caucasus. 

Role of Women 

Article 35 of the Soviet Constitution clearly states that women 
and men "have equal rights" and possess equal access to education 



230 



Social Structure 



and training, employment, promotions, and remuneration and to 
participation in social, political, and cultural activity. Women also 
receive special medical and workplace protection, including incen- 
tives for mothers to work outside the home and legal and material 
support in their role as mothers; the latter support includes 112 
days of maternity leave at full pay. At the conclusion of their mater- 
nity leave, women may take up to a year of leave without pay and 
return to the same job if they desire. Employers may not dis- 
criminate against pregnant or nursing women by reducing their 
pay or dismissing them, and mothers with small children have the 
right to work part time. 

Nevertheless, both within society in general and within the fam- 
ily, the position of women in 1989 was not equal to that of men. 
Soviet authorities have often pointed to the high percentage of 
women in certain fields as proof of gender equality in the country. 
For example, in the 1980s women constituted just over half the 
country's work force, four-fifths of its health workers, more than 
two-thirds of its physicians and economists, and three-quarters of 
those employed in education. The authorities neglected to add, 
however, that the average pay for most women in these fields was 
below the country's average pay. Moreover, the higher the level 
in a profession, the smaller the percentage of women. For instance, 
in 1984 women constituted 83 percent of elementary school direc- 
tors but only 42 percent of secondary school directors and 38 per- 
cent of middle school directors. In the early 1980s, 46 percent of 
all collective farm workers were women, but they constituted only 
1.9 percent of collective farm chairpersons. 

Women were also underrepresented in the CPSU and its leader- 
ship. In 1983 women constituted only 27.6 percent of the mem- 
bership of the party and only 4.2 percent of the Central Committee; 
in 1986 they were totally absent from the Politburo (see Social Com- 
position of the Party, ch. 7). 

Male-Female Relationships 

Male-female relationships in the Soviet Union reflected not only 
the stresses generally present in urban and industrial societies, plus 
those peculiar to communist societies, but also the influence of differ- 
ent cultural traditions. Predictably, the non-Russian Central Asian 
and Caucasian nationalities exhibited more traditional attitudes 
regarding marriage, divorce, and abortion than did the European 
population of the country. 

Marriage 

Unless specified otherwise by the laws of the individual repub- 
lics, Soviet citizens may marry at age eighteen without parental 



231 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



permission. The Latvian, Estonian, Moldavian, Ukrainian, Arme- 
nian, Kazakh, and Kirgiz republics have lowered this age to seven- 
teen years. In 1980 approximately 73 percent of the brides and 62 
percent of the grooms were under twenty-five years of age. One- 
third of all marriages involved persons under twenty years of age, 
and in 20 percent of the marriages involving persons under that 
age the bride was pregnant. 

In the larger cities, newly married couples often lived with either 
set of parents; often the honeymoon consisted of a short private 
stay in the parents' home. About 70 percent of childless young cou- 
ples lived with parents during the first years of marriage because 
of low income or a shortage of housing. 

Cultural compatibility played a larger role in the selection of a 
mate than did race, religion, occupation, or income. Soviet sur- 
veys also pointed to love, mutual attraction, and common interests 
as important reasons given for marriage. British sociologist David 
Lane has observed that "companionship" between spouses has been 
a more important notion in the West than in the Soviet Union, 
where couples have often taken separate vacations while the chil- 
dren were sent to camp. 

Roles in Marriage 

Most married women in the Soviet Union worked outside the 
home in addition to fulfilling their roles of wife, mother, and 
homemaker. As in other industrialized countries, women had 
difficulty reconciling the demands of career and home. At home, 
Soviet women spent more than twice as much time on housework 
as men — an average of twenty-eight hours a week as opposed to 
twelve — and women resented this. Before marriage, the average 
woman was said to have had forty-two hours a week of free time, 
but after marriage this number was cut in half. Not surprisingly, 
Soviet research has shown that marital happiness was direcdy con- 
nected to the extent a husband shared in domestic work. Husbands 
and wives from the elite tended to share decisions and housework 
to a greater extent than those from other social strata. In blue-collar 
and agricultural families, the husband was considered head of the 
household, although the wife held the purse strings. 

Nationality appeared to be less of an influence on marital roles 
than social status and place of residence. By the mid-1970s, even 
most Muslim husbands were willing to share in some housework 
with their wives; the higher the socioeconomic status of the family, 
the more the husband shared the work. In Muslim families and 
in other nationality groups where the patriarchal system has re- 
mained strong, the husband was regarded as the head of the family 



232 



Social Structure 



and made most of the major family decisions. Among younger and 
better educated Muslims, however, and in the European part of 
the Soviet Union, the husband and wife shared in the decision mak- 
ing, a practice that may have resulted from the wife's increasing 
contribution to family income. 

Divorce 

With a rate of 3.4 divorces per 1,000 people, the Soviet Union 
was second only to the United States (4.8 divorces) among indus- 
trialized countries in 1986. David Lane has asserted, however, that 
the real family disintegration rate between these two countries was 
comparable because the legal difficulties and expense of a divorce 
in the Soviet Union encouraged "unofficial" divorces or separa- 
tions. 

The Soviet divorce rate varied according to region and popula- 
tion density. In Soviet Central Asia, it was two to three times lower 
than in European areas; the rate was also higher in cities and in 
newly developed regions. Divorce rates in rural areas averaged 
about 40 percent of those in cities. 

Surveys have shown that couples divorced for a variety of rea- 
sons. Drunkenness, incompatibility, and infidelity were major 
causes; jealousy of the spouse, separation, and physical incompati- 
bility were minor causes. In the Muslim areas of the country, con- 
flict between the wife and the husband's parents was a major reason 
for divorce; however, Muslim women were less likely to initiate 
divorce than women in other regions of the Soviet Union. Stronger 
devotion to family life and the nature of marriage itself lowered 
acceptance of divorce in Muslim areas. Soviet surveys have shown 
that 87 percent of urban and 84 percent of rural Uzbeks opposed 
divorce for couples with children, whereas only 54 percent of urban 
Russians and 51 percent of urban Estonians held this view. 

Housing problems and the lack of privacy contributed signifi- 
cantly to the high rate of divorce. One study showed that nearly 
20 percent of divorces occurring during the first years of marriage 
were attributed to housing problems and about 1 8 percent to con- 
flicts with parents. In 1973 in Leningrad, 31.7 percent of divorc- 
ing couples had lived with parents or in a hostel, 62.3 percent in 
a shared apartment, and only 5.1 percent in a separate apartment. 

Divorces cost between 60 and 200 rubles depending on income 
and were granted more quickly if the couple had no children. In 
general, divorces were relatively simple to obtain, but the court 
always attempted to reconcile the couple first. Courts also generally 
awarded the mother custody of the children. 



233 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Sex and Contraception 

Soviet society in general did not approve of unmarried couples 
living together but was somewhat more tolerant of occasional pre- 
marital sexual relations. The lack of suitable contraceptive devices, 
combined with rare public discussion about contraception, led to 
a large number of unwanted pregnancies. Studies in Leningrad 
have shown that 38 percent of all babies born in Leningrad in 1978 
were conceived before marriage. A Soviet study revealed that the 
number of children born out of wedlock in the Soviet Union 
amounted to nearly 10 percent of all births, ranging from 22 per- 
cent in the Estonian Republic to 3 percent in the Azerbaydzhan 
Republic. Courts could order an unmarried father to pay child sup- 
port if he lived with the child's mother; otherwise, the law was not 
firm, especially where proof of paternity was insufficient. No so- 
cial stigma was attached to illegitimate children, and unmarried 
women received maternity benefits. Sex for sale — prostitution — 
however, was illegal and punishable by law. The Soviet penal code 
severely punished individuals running a brothel, pimping, or 
soliciting. 

Although women were officially discouraged from having abor- 
tions, they were legal and were the chief form of birth control in 
the country. An estimated 8 million took place each year. Abor- 
tions were free for working women and cost 2 to 5 rubles for other 
women, depending on where they lived. Despite their availabil- 
ity, an estimated 15 percent of all abortions in the Soviet Union 
were illegally performed in private facilities. The approximate ratio 
of abortions to live births was nearly three to one. 

In Muslim regions, the rate of abortion was much lower than 
in the European part of the country, although the higher her sta- 
tus or the more Russified the Muslim woman was, the more likely 
she was to have an abortion. Ironically, in European areas the sit- 
uation was reversed; less educated couples were more likely to seek 
abortions than better educated couples, who were likely to use 
effective contraception. 

The Soviet Family 

The Soviet view of the family as the basic social unit in society 
has evolved from revolutionary to conservative; the government 
first attempted to weaken the family and then to strengthen it. 
According to a 1968 law, Principles of Legislation on Marriage 
and the Family of the USSR and the Union Republics, parents 
are ' 'to raise their children in the spirit of the moral code of a builder 
of communism, to attend to their physical development and their 
instruction in and preparation for socially useful activity." 



234 



Social Structure 



Evolution of the Soviet Family 

The early Soviet state sought to remake the family, believing 
that although the economic emancipation of workers would deprive 
families of their economic function, it would not destroy them but 
rather base them exclusively on mutual affection. Religious mar- 
riage was replaced by civil marriage, divorce became easy to ob- 
tain, and unwed mothers received special protection. All children, 
whether legitimate or illegitimate, were given equal rights before 
the law, women were granted sexual equality under matrimonial 
law, inheritance of property was abolished, and abortion was 
legalized. 

In the early 1920s, however, the weakening of family ties, com- 
bined with the devastation and dislocation caused by the Civil War 
(1918-21), produced a wave of nearly 7 million homeless children. 
This situation prompted senior party officials to conclude that a 
more stable family life was required to rebuild the country's econ- 
omy and shattered social structure. By 1922 the government allowed 
some forms of inheritance, and after 1926 full inheritance rights 
were restored. By the late 1920s, adults had been made more 
responsible for the care of their children, and common-law mar- 
riage had been given equal legal status with civil marriage. 

During Stalin's rule, the trend toward strengthening the family 
continued. In 1936 the government began to award payments to 
women with large families and made abortions and divorces more 
difficult to obtain. In 1942 it subjected single persons and child- 
less married persons to additional taxes. In 1944 only registered 
marriages were recognized to be legal, and divorce became sub- 
ject to the court's discretion. In the same year, the government 
began to award medals to women who gave birth to five or more 
children and took upon itself the support of illegitimate children. 

After Stalin's death in 1953, the government rescinded some of 
its more restrictive social legislation. In 1955 it declared abortions 
for medical reasons legal, and in 1968 it declared all abortions legal. 
The state also liberalized divorce procedures in the mid-1960s but 
in 1968 introduced new limitations. 

In 1974 the government began to subsidize poorer families whose 
average per capita income did not exceed 50 rubles per month (later 
raised to 75 rubles per month in some northern and eastern regions). 
The subsidy amounted to 12 rubles per month for each child below 
eight years of age. It was estimated that in 1974 about 3.5 million 
families (14 million people, or about 5 percent of the entire popula- 
tion) received this subsidy. With the increase in per capita income, 
however, the number of children requiring such assistance decreased. 



235 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

In 1985 the government raised the age limit for assistance to twelve 
years and under. In 1981 the subsidy to an unwed mother with 
a child increased to 20 rubles per month; in early 1987 an esti- 
mated 1.5 million unwed mothers were receiving such assistance, 
or twice as many as during the late 1970s. 

Family Size 

Family size and composition depended mainly on the place of 
residence — urban or rural — and ethnic group. The size and com- 
position of such families was also influenced by housing and in- 
come limitations, pensions, and female employment outside the 
home. The typical urban family consisted of a married couple, two 
children, and, in about 20 percent of the cases, one of the grand- 
mothers, whose assistance in raising the children and in housekeep- 
ing was important in the large majority of families having two wage 
earners. Rural families generally had more children than urban 
families and often supported three generations under one roof. 
Families in Central Asia and the Caucasus tended to have more 
children than families elsewhere in the Soviet Union and included 
grandparents in the family structure. In general, the average family 
size has followed that of other industrialized countries, with higher 
income families having both fewer children and a lower rate of infant 
mortality. From the early 1960s to the late 1980s, the number of 
families with more than one child decreased by about 50 percent 
and in 1988 totaled 1.9 million. About 75 percent of the families 
with more than one child lived in the southern regions of the coun- 
try, half of them in Central Asia. In the Russian, Ukrainian, Belo- 
russian, Moldavian, Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian republics, 
families with one and two children constituted more than 90 per- 
cent of all families, whereas in Central Asia those with three or 
more children ranged from 14 percent in the Kirgiz Republic to 
31 percent in the Tadzhik Republic. Surveys suggested that most 
parents would have had more children if they had had more living 
space. 

Beginning in the mid-1980s, the government promoted family 
planning in order to slow the growth of the Central Asian indigenous 
populations. Local opposition to this policy surfaced especially in 
the Uzbek and Tadzhik republics. In general, however, the govern- 
ment continued publicly to honor mothers of large families. Women 
received the Motherhood Medal, Second Class, for their fifth live 
birth and the Heroine Mother medal for their tenth. Most of these 
awards went to women in Central Asia and the Caucasus (see table 
21, Appendix A). 



236 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Family and Kinship Structures 

The extended family was more prevalent in Central Asia and 
the Caucasus than in the other sections of the country and, gener- 
ally, in rural areas more than in urban areas. Deference to paren- 
tal wishes regarding marriage was particularly strong in these areas, 
even among the Russians residing there. 

Extended families helped perpetuate traditional life-styles. The 
patriarchal values that accompany this life-style affected such issues 
as contraception, the distribution of family power, and the roles 
of individuals in marriage and the family. For example, traditional 
Uzbeks placed a higher value on their responsibilities as parents 
than on their own happiness as spouses and individuals. The youn- 
ger and better educated Uzbeks and working women, however, 
were more likely to behave and think like their counterparts in the 
European areas of the Soviet Union, who tended to emphasize in- 
dividual careers. 

Extended families were not prevalent in the cities. Couples lived 
with parents during the first years of marriage only because of eco- 
nomics or the housing shortage. When children were born, the cou- 
ple usually acquired a separate apartment. 

Function of Family 

The government has assumed many functions of the pre- Soviet 
family. Various public institutions, for example, have taken respon- 
sibility for supporting individuals during times of sickness, incapacity, 
old age, maternity, and industrial injury. State-run nurseries, pre- 
schools, schools, clubs, and youth organizations have taken over a 
great part of the family's role in socializing children. Their role in 
socialization has been limited, however, because preschools had places 
for only half of all Soviet children under seven. Despite government 
assumption of many responsibilities, spouses were still responsible 
for the material support of each other, minor children, and disabled 
adult children. 

The transformation of the patriarchal, three- generation rural 
household to a modern, urban family of two adults and two chil- 
dren attests to the great changes that Soviet society has undergone 
since 1917. That transformation has not produced the originally en- 
visioned egalitarianism, but it has forever changed the nature of what 
was once the Russian Empire. 

* * * 

Excellent monographs analyzing Soviet society include Soviet Econ- 
omy and Society by David Lane and Modern Soviet Society, originally 



238 



Social Structure 



published in French, by Basile Kerblay. In Poverty in the Soviet Union 
and other articles and books, Mervyn Matthews discusses the 
problems of poverty and low wages in certain sectors of the Soviet 
economy. Providing a general overview of the Soviet Union, Vadim 
Medish's The Soviet Union contains useful insights into Soviet soci- 
ety, as does the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Russia and the Soviet Union. 
In their monograph Modernization, Value Change, and Fertility in the 
Soviet Union, Ellen Jones and Fred W. Grupp provide useful infor- 
mation on the position of women in Soviet society and on male 
and female roles. Genia K. Browning's Women and Politics in the 
USSR focuses on the position of Soviet women in society in gen- 
eral and Soviet feminism in particular. Gail Warshofsky Lapidus 
has written several informative books and articles on Soviet women. 
(For further information and complete citations, see Bibliography.) 



239 



Newborn baby and nurse, young children, and pensioner 



THE SOVIET CONSTITUTION GUARANTEES to Soviet 
citizens free, universal, and multilingual education; free, qualified 
medical care provided by state health institutions; provision for 
old age, sickness, and disability; and maternity allowances and sub- 
sidies to families with many children. In quantitative terms, Soviet 
regimes have made impressive strides in these areas since 1917. 
The quality of the education and care, however, often fell below 
standards achieved in the West. 

Before the Bolshevik Revolution (see Glossary), education was 
available to only an elite minority, consisting largely of the aristo- 
cratic upper class; tsarist Russia's literacy rate was barely 25 per- 
cent. By the mid-1980s, more than 110 million students — about 
40 percent of the population — were enrolled in the Soviet Union's 
government-controlled coeducational schools, universities, and in- 
stitutes. The nation's literacy rate reached nearly 100 percent — 
proclaimed by Soviet officials as the highest in the world. Western 
authorities stressed, however, that the quality of Soviet education 
often lagged behind that of the West, in large measure because of 
the high degree of centralization and standardization of Soviet 
schools, the emphasis on political indoctrination, and the reliance 
on learning by rote and memorization. 

On the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution, medical care was avail- 
able to only a minority of the population, made up largely of 
aristocrats and upper-level civil servants. The annual death toll from 
epidemics and famine was in the millions. By the mid-1980s, the 
Soviet Union had the world's highest ratio of physicians and hospital 
beds per inhabitant, and basic medical care was available to the 
large majority of the Soviet population, although the quality of 
health care, in general, was considered low by Western standards. 

Apart from limited assistance provided by private and church- 
run charitable organizations, no nationwide welfare programs 
provided for the needs of the old, disabled, and poor before the 
Soviet era began. In the 1980s, social security and welfare pro- 
grams were providing modest support to over 56 million veterans 
and old-age pensioners, millions of invalids and disabled children 
and adults, expectant mothers, and multichildren families. 

During the regimes of Joseph V. Stalin and Nikita S. Khrush- 
chev, Soviet authorities established the underlying principles and 
basic organization of education, health care, and welfare programs. 
The common denominator linking these programs was the country's 



243 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

concern with establishing a technically skilled, well-indoctrinated, 
and healthy labor force. A hallmark of Soviet education was its 
primary political function, originally enunciated by Vladimir I. 
Lenin, as a tool for remaking society. Political indoctrination — 
the inculcation of Marxist-Leninist (see Glossary) ideals — thus re- 
mained a constant throughout the uneven, decades-long process 
of educational expansion and reform, and it set the Soviet system 
of schooling apart from contemporary Western models. 

With the coming to power of General Secretary Mikhail S. 
Gorbachev in 1985 and the introduction of his policy of glasnosV 
(see Glossary), the achievements made in education, health, and 
welfare since 1917 were being increasingly overshadowed by open 
criticism and even growing alarm over serious failures in these 
spheres. By the mid-1980s, the Soviet leadership and public alike 
finally acknowledged what Western observers had been noting for 
some time, namely, that the decades-long emphasis on quantita- 
tive expansion had come at the expense of quality. Schools were 
failing to develop the technically skilled work force needed to achieve 
the goals of perestroika (see Glossary) and to create a modern and 
technologically developed economic system on a par with the ad- 
vanced economies of the Western world. 

The situation in Soviet health care was even more serious. In 
the 1970s and 1980s, significant increases in infant mortality and 
considerable declines in life expectancy accompanied an alarming 
deterioration in the quality of health care. Pension and welfare pro- 
grams were also failing to provide adequate protection, as evidenced 
by the large segment of the population living at the poverty 
threshold. In the mid-1980s, Soviet leaders openly acknowledged 
these problems and introduced a number of reforms in an effort 
to rectify them. 

Education 

From its inception, Soviet education had Marxist-Leninist 
philosophical underpinnings, including the dual aim of educating 
youth and shaping their character. These aims were brought 
together, as well, in the notion of "poly technical education," de- 
fined loosely as integrating education with life — ideally connect- 
ing formal schooling with practical training in all kinds of schools 
and at all levels of education — with the aim of providing a dedi- 
cated and skilled work force. 

The government operated all schools, except for a handful of 
officially approved church-run seminaries, which had an enroll- 
ment of only several hundred people. Other characteristics were 
the leading role of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union 



244 



Education, Health, and Welfare 



(CPSU) in all aspects of education; the centralized and hierarchi- 
cally structured administrative organs; and an essentially conser- 
vative approach to pedagogy. The contemporary system also 
reflected some holdovers from tsarist schools, including the five- 
point grading scale, a formal and regimented classroom environ- 
ment, and school uniforms — dark dresses with white collars (and 
white pinafores in the lower grades) for girls and dark pants and 
white shirts for boys — in the secondary schools. 

Educational reforms in the 1980s called for increased funding 
and changes in curriculum, textbooks, and teaching methods to 
correct serious shortcomings in the schools and improve the qual- 
ity of education nationwide. An important aim of the reforms was 
the creation of a "new school" that could meet fully the economic 
and social demands of the greatly modernized and technologically 
advanced nation the Soviet leadership wished to create as it led 
the country into the twenty- first century. 

Philosophy and Aims 

The philosophical underpinnings and ultimate goals of Soviet 
education were closely interwoven and could be expressed through 
two Russian words: vospitanie (upbringing or rearing) and obrazovanie 
(formal education). Marxist-Leninist ideology, the philosophical 
foundation of Soviet education, stressed the proper upbringing of 
youth to create the "new Soviet man" (see Glossary). To this end, 
the school system bore the lion's share of forming character by in- 
stilling and reinforcing Marxist-Leninist morals and ethics, begin- 
ning with preschool and kindergarten and continuing throughout 
the entire schooling process. Lenin stressed the moral goal of edu- 
cation, declaring after the Bolshevik Revolution: "The entire pur- 
pose of training, educating, and teaching the youth . . . should be 
to imbue them with communist ethics." The schools taught chil- 
dren key socialist (see Glossary) virtues, such as love of labor, the 
atheist (scientific-materialist) view of life, Soviet patriotism and de- 
votion to the homeland, and the primacy of the collective, namely, 
the need to place the interests of society before those of the in- 
dividual. 

The extent to which Soviet education bore the responsibility for 
the rearing, or socialization, of youth set it apart from contemporary 
Western education systems and led many Western observers to see 
a similarity between modern Soviet schools and American parochial 
schools of the past. Another uniquely Soviet feature was the close 
integration of the schools with other major areas of society — cultural, 
political, economic, and mass media — all of which served to rein- 
force the political indoctrination process. 



245 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

The role of the family in child-rearing was not ignored, however, 
and beginning in the 1980s Soviet leaders renewed emphasis on 
the family's central role in character formation. Parents were en- 
couraged to create a nurturing and loving environment at home 
and to cooperate actively with the schools, which generally led the 
way, in fostering in their children the personal qualities considered 
essential to a socialist morality: "Soviet patriotism, devotion to 
socially useful labor, and a feeling of being part of a social group." 

The task of molding the "builders of communism" was advanced 
as well through extracurricular activities centered on youth organi- 
zations that had close ties to the CPSU. Almost all schoolchildren 
belonged to these groups: the Young Octobrists, for ages six to nine, 
and the Pioneers, ages ten to fifteen. Most of the students in the 
upper classes of secondary school belonged to the Komsomol (see 
Glossary) for ages fourteen to twenty-eight, which was specifically 
tasked with providing active assistance to the CPSU in building 
a communist society. To this end, Komsomol members supervised 
and guided the two younger groups in a wide range of activities, 
including labor projects, sports and cultural events, field trips, sum- 
mer camp programs, and parades and ceremonies commemorat- 
ing national holidays (for example, May Day and Lenin's birthday), 
to develop in them proper socialist behavior and values and to at- 
tract them, even at these early stages, to "socially beneficial" work. 

In addition to molding socialist morality, Soviet schools provided 
formal academic education, transmitting the knowledge and skills 
to provide the nation's economy with a qualified and highly skilled 
labor force needed to sustain the country in a modern technologi- 
cal age. The dual concept of rearing and educating was brought 
together as well in the notion of "poly technical education," which 
stressed the inclusion of practical training at all levels of school- 
ing. The poly technical approach to education, which had waxed 
and waned since the era of Khrushchev, was receiving renewed 
emphasis in the late 1980s under Gorbachev. Polytechnical school- 
ing had three key components: cognitive — gaining knowledge about 
production sectors and industrial processes and organization, 
production tools and machinery, and energy and power sources; 
moral — developing respect for, and dedication to, both intellec- 
tual and physical endeavor and eradicating the distinction between 
mental and manual labor; and practical — acquiring sound work 
habits through direct involvement in the production or creation 
of goods and services. A polytechnical approach was important not 
only to provide the dedicated, highly technically trained, and 
productive workers needed to realize Gorbachev's program of eco- 
nomic restructuring and modernization but also to adhere to a 



246 



Education, Health, and Welfare 



central, publicly stated, aim of higher education, namely, the cre- 
ation of a classless society. 

Control and Administration 

As was the case in every other major area of Soviet life in the 
late 1980s, the CPSU exercised ultimate control over the develop- 
ment and functioning of the nation's education system. Designated 
by the Constitution as "the leading core of all organizations of the 
working people, both public and state," the Central Committee 
of the CPSU made major policies and decisions regarding all aspects 
of education (see Central Committee, ch. 7). The party leader- 
ship accepted fully Lenin's dictum about the inseparability of pol- 
itics and schooling/schools, and it appreciated the far-reaching 
power of education as a tool for refashioning the country's social 
fabric, "an instrument for the formation of a Communist society." 
Specifically, the Central Committee's Science and Education Insti- 
tutions Department initiated education policies to ensure ideolog- 
ical conformity in all instruction. Together with the committee's 
Ideological Department, it issued laws and regulations governing 
all major spheres of education. The Council of Ministers and the 
Supreme Soviet, in turn, gave pro forma ratification to party direc- 
tives and executed them (see Central Government, ch. 8). Adminis- 
tration of the school system was carried out by the government's 
education ministries under the direct authority of the Council of 
Ministers. In the late 1980s, the two chief administrative organs 
were the Ministry of Education, which administered primary and 
general secondary schools, and the Ministry of Higher and Special- 
ized Secondary Education, which oversaw institutions of higher 
learning and specialized secondary schools. These central, union- 
republic ministries (see Glossary) operated through similarly named 
republic ministries, which were further broken down into province, 
district, and local school committees. The republic ministries and 
their administrative organs at the province, district, and local levels 
were responsible for implementing the laws, regulations, and direc- 
tives concerning school curricula, methods of instruction, and text- 
books, and they also supervised the allocation of funds at their 
respective levels. 

Other main administrative organs (with counterpart agencies at 
lower governmental levels) were the Ministry of Culture, which 
operated special schools of art, ballet, and music, and the All-Union 
Central Council of Trade Unions, which oversaw vocational and 
technical schools. Management of higher education institutions 
involved administrative agencies from the various party organs 
and government ministries, such as those involved with health, 



247 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

agriculture, communications, and civil aviation. Not surprisingly, 
these numerous entities spawned a huge bureaucracy, one that 
represented a formidable obstacle to implementation of major school 
reforms introduced in the mid-1980s. 

In the 1980s, overbureaucratization was openly criticized by the 
official press and by leading educators as a major cause of the seri- 
ous lack of quality in education. For example, management of tech- 
nical training, the most critical area for the success of economic 
reform, was excessive: seventy-four ministries and administrative 
departments oversaw institutions of higher learning, with thirty 
of these ministries directing only one or two institutes each. Another 
200 administrative departments were in charge of specialized sec- 
ondary schools. 

Traditionally, the party apparatus had exercised control over not 
only the direction of educational development but also the im- 
plementation of policies and directives. The essentially parallel struc- 
ture between party and government provided the main mechanism 
for this oversight. Furthermore, most administrators in central, 
republic, and local education posts were party members, as were 
the majority of school directors and many teachers, particularly 
at the higher levels (one-sixth of secondary school teachers belonged 
to the GPSU). The large body of Komsomol members in the upper 
grades of secondary schools and in institutions of higher learning 
also aided party oversight. 

Pedagogy and Planning 

Under the administrative oversight of the Academy of Sciences 
(see Glossary) and the Ministry of Education, the Academy of Peda- 
gogical Sciences was responsible for conducting research and de- 
velopment in education. The Academy of Pedagogical Sciences had 
thirteen institutes, several experimental schools, and other facili- 
ties. Each institute focused on a specific area of research, such as 
curriculum and teaching methods, general and pedagogical psy- 
chology, visual teaching aids and school equipment, labor train- 
ing, and professional orientation. The academy's research efforts 
also included special education (for the physically and mentally im- 
paired), teacher training, testing methodology, and textbook prepa- 
ration. 

The academy brought together the country's leading research- 
ers in the pedagogical sciences, prominent teachers, and a small 
number of foreign (mostly East European) education specialists. 
The efforts of these pedagogues and educators were guided by the 
academy's dual mission: first, developing a socialist mentality by 
inculcating a Marxist-Leninist worldview; and, second, providing 



248 



Education, Health, and Welfare 



highly qualified and committed workers for the nation's econ- 
omy. 

The first component — developing a Marxist-Leninist worldview 
and communist ethics — was geared to general character training 
as well, impressing upon youth basic ideas of good and bad, honesty, 
modesty, kindness, friendship, self-discipline, love of studies and 
conscientiousness, and "correct social behavior." Although the po- 
litical content of school subjects had to be ideologically correct, the 
materials were not necessarily overwhelmingly politicized, as in- 
dicated by a Western study of reading topics in secondary schools 
that found less than one-third of them dealt with clear-cut socio- 
political themes. 

The second chief concern of Soviet pedagogy was upgrading voca- 
tional education and labor training in the general secondary school. 
A related central goal was inculcating in youngsters a respect for 
blue-collar work. This remained a difficult if not insurmountable 
challenge because of Soviet society's traditional view of manual 
labor as intrinsically inferior to work that involved purely mental 
or intellectual effort. 

The most important Soviet pedagogue historically was Anton 
S. Makarenko (1888-1939), whose theories on child-rearing and 
education, which rejected corporal punishment and stressed per- 
suasion and example, served as the foundation of contemporary 
education and parenting. His methodology also emphasized de- 
velopment of good work habits, love of work, self-discipline, and 
collective cooperation. Makarenko 's approach to discipline re- 
mained the norm in Soviet schools in the 1980s. Physical punish- 
ment was forbidden; disciplinary measures included oral reprimands 
by teachers, collective pressure (peer disapproval), bad marks in 
record books (demerits), consultations with parents, and, only as 
a last resort, expulsion from school. 

Change in pedagogy's predominantly conservative approach 
came very slowly. Old-fashioned teaching methods, a regimented 
and formal classroom environment, and the rote method of 
learning — holdovers from tsarist Russia that became firmly en- 
trenched in the Stalin era — were still the norm in the Soviet schools 
of the 1980s. But during the second half of the 1980s, theories and 
practices of a number of progressive educators were being advanced 
in conjunction with efforts to reform schooling. One of the impor- 
tant figures in this area was Leonid V. Zankov, an education the- 
orist who had been influenced by the writings and philosophy of 
American educator John Dewey and who had advocated in the 
1960s the elimination of the rote-learning approach. The leading 
figures in the 1980s among those striving to develop the philosophy 



249 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

and methodology for a "new school" were sociologist Vladimir N. 
Shubkin, mathematician Mikhail M. Postnikov, and innovative 
teacher M. Shchetinin. 

The State Planning Committee (Gosudarstvennyi planovyi 
komitet — Gosplan; see Glossary), part of the Council of Ministers, 
played a major role in Soviet education by influencing the train- 
ing and distribution of specialists in institutions of higher learn- 
ing. Its task was to ensure graduation of sufficient numbers of people 
trained in certain specialties to meet the work force requirements 
of the nation's economy. By directing the higher schools to admit 
only a limited number of students in each specialty, Gosplan in 
effect established a quota for student admissions. 

But despite extensive planning efforts, Gosplan consistently did 
more to cause than to alleviate the country's manpower problems, 
primarily because planning was based on immediate rather than 
long-term needs. The situation was particularly serious in the 1980s, 
when the push to modernize the economy with high technology 
and automation was seriously hampered by the lack of skilled en- 
gineering and technical workers. Although the schools graduated 
a large number of engineers, their training was often too theoreti- 
cal, narrow in scope, and limited in practical experience. Broader 
training and multiple- skill capability were needed. The short- 
sightedness of the planning apparatus was exacerbated by a con- 
tinuing contradiction between student preferences and economic 
and social demands, as well as by an inability to attract enough 
young people into lower level technical fields. 

Institutions of Learning 

To provide free, universal, and multilingual education to all 
citizens, the government operated a vast network of learning in- 
stitutions, including preschools, general secondary schools, special- 
ized secondary schools, vocational- technical schools, trade schools, 
and special education schools, as well as universities and other in- 
stitutions of higher learning (see fig. 11). Completion of the sec- 
ondary school program, roughly equivalent to American high 
school, became compulsory in 1970. By 1987 more than 120 mil- 
lion people, out of a population of nearly 282 million, had com- 
pleted secondary and higher education; another 43.7 million had 
finished at least eight years of schooling. 

The common threads linking all institutions of learning were the 
central aims of rearing and educating youth; thus, political indoc- 
trination and the education and training of specialists and skilled 
workers remained of pivotal concern at all levels of schooling. 
Curricula, textbooks, and teaching methods were standardized 



250 



Education, Health, and Welfare 



nationwide, Except for a low enrollment fee for preschool, all tui- 
tion was free, and the majority of students in specialized second- 
ary schools and institutions of higher learning received monthly 
stipends. Although the degree of standardization and centraliza- 
tion was very great, the school system was not totally monolithic, 
and it reflected the multiethnic diversity of the country's fifteen 
republics as well as considerable differences, particularly in qual- 
ity, between urban and rural schools. 

About 600 schools specialized in teacher training. Many univer- 
sity graduates also joined the ranks of secondary school teachers. 
In general, although salaries were not always commensurate with 
status, Soviet society had a great deal of respect for the teaching 
profession. 

Preschool 

In 1986 the Soviet Union operated approximately 142,700 
preschool institutions on a year-round basis, with an enrollment 
of over 16.5 million; this represented 57 percent of all preschool- 
age children and was 1 .6 million below demand. To eliminate this 
shortage, as well as to encourage women with infants or toddlers 
to return to the work force, the government planned to make avail- 
able new preschool facilities for another 4.4 million youngsters dur- 
ing the Twelfth Five- Year Plan (1986-90). 

Preschool institutions included nurseries (iaslt) and kindergar- 
tens (detskie sady), often housed in the same buildings and located 
in urban and suburban neighborhoods, as well as at factory sites 
and on collective farms. Nurseries accepted children between the 
ages of six months and three years, but the percentage of young- 
sters under two years of age was typically low. Many mothers 
preferred to stay home with their infant children through the first 
year (working women were granted a full year of maternity leave), 
and frequently a grandmother or another family member or friend 
provided child care to toddlers. (In 1979, for example, 8 to 9 mil- 
lion preschool children were cared for by grandmothers.) The more 
common practice was to enroll children of about three years of age 
in preschool. The government subsidized 80 percent of preschool 
tuition, requiring parents to pay fairly low fees of 12 rubles (for 
value of the ruble — see Glossary) a month for nursery care and 
about 9 rubles a month for kindergarten; in certain cases — for 
example, for children from large families — enrollment was free. 
By freeing women for the work force, the preschool system was 
economically beneficial both to the state and to the family, which 
generally needed two incomes. Kindergarten combined extended 
day care (as a rule, from 8:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M.) with some 



251 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



AGE 



22 
21 
20 
19 
18 
17 
16 
15 
14 
13 
12 
11 
10 
9 
8 
7 
6 
5 
4 
3 
2 
1 



YEAR 

OF 
STUDY 



16 



15 



14 



13 



12 



1 1 



10 



GRADUATE STUDY 

UNIVERSITIES, INSTITUTES, 
ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, MILITARY ACADEMIES: 
THREE YEARS FOR A GRADUATE DEGREE 



SPECIAL 


SPECIAL 


SCHOOLS 


SCHOOLS 


FOR 


FOR THE 


MENTALLY 


GIFTED: 


AND 


BALLET, 


PHYSICALLY 


MUSIC, 


HANDICAPPED 


MATH 



HIGHER EDUCATION 

UNIVERSITIES, INSTITUTES, MILITARY ACADEMIES: 
FULL-TIME, PART-TIME, OR CORRESPONDENCE; 
FOUR OR FIVE YEARS FULL-TIME FOR A DEGREE 



ALTERNATIVE ROUTES 
l(FULL-TIME, PART-TIME, OR CORRESPONDENCE) 




SECONDARY 
SPECIALIZED 
SCHOOL 



SECONDARY 
VOCATIONAL 
TECHNICAL 
SCHOOL 



VOCATIONAL 
TECHNICAL 
SCHOOL 



MILITARY 
SCHOOL 



DIRECT 
\ ROUTE 
\ 

\ 

\ 

\ 



GENERAL 
SECONDARY SCHOOL 



KINDERGARTEN 



NURSERY OR HOME 



Source: Based on information from David Lane, Soviet Economy and Society, New York, 1985, 
272; and Vadim Medish, The Soviet Union, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1987, 197. 



Figure 11. Structure of the Education System, 1987 

academic preparation for entry into the first grade (the starting age 
was gradually lowered to six years of age in the mid-1980s). 

In addition to providing children with a head start for regular 
school, preschools began the important process of instilling societal 



252 



Education, Health, and Welfare 



values and molding socialist character. The children's daily activi- 
ties, which included story-telling, drawing, music, games, and out- 
door play, were highly structured and consistently conducted in 
groups, fostering a sense of belonging to the collective, the primacy 
of the needs of the group over those of the individual, and the prefer- 
ence for competition among groups rather than individuals. Polit- 
ical indoctrination at this level consisted of songs and slogans, 
celebration of national holidays, and stories about Lenin and other 
heroes of the Bolshevik Revolution. Preschoolers were also taught 
respect for authority, patriotism, obedience, discipline, and order. 
Children were provided hot meals and snacks, child-size beds for 
nap time, and basic health care. 

Western visitors to Soviet preschools in the 1970s and early 1980s 
reported seeing children who were happy, healthy, and well cared 
for. But this positive image was sharply contradicted in 1988 with 
the publication in a Soviet newspaper of an article titled "Atten- 
tion: Children in Trouble!" The article was endorsed by a group 
of specialists (including R. Bure, doctor of pedagogical sciences 
and head of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences Preschool Scien- 
tific Research Laboratory) who participated in a seminar called 
"Kindergarten in the Year 2000." According to the newspaper 
piece, a crisis in preschool education was emerging: the ratio of 
twenty-five children per teacher was far too high; teachers and other 
staff were poorly trained; and children's health was suffering be- 
cause of inadequate medical care. Children were entering first grade 
unprepared intellectually and physically. More than 50 percent were 
"neurotic," two- thirds suffered from allergies, 60 percent had poor 
posture, and 80 percent suffered from upper-respiratory infections. 
The large majority had not mastered the most basic norms of con- 
duct and social interaction. 

Secondary Education 

In the late 1980s, the Soviet Union had in place a vast and com- 
plex network of secondary schools comprising general secondary 
schools (grades one through eleven), secondary vocational-technical 
schools, specialized secondary schools, special education schools, 
and extramural schools (part-time, evening, and correspondence 
programs). In 1970 compulsory secondary education was extend- 
ed to ten years from eight. The 1984 reform of general secondary 
schools and secondary vocational-technical schools lowered the start- 
ing age for first grade from age seven to age six and increased com- 
pulsory schooling to eleven years. 

In 1987 the Soviet Union operated 138,000 general secondary 
schools, with a total enrollment of 43.9 million students. There were 



253 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

roughly three phases to the general secondary program of study, 
reflecting differences in curriculum and total time in class: the 
primary grades, one through three; intermediate, four through 
eight; and upper secondary, nine and ten. The 1984 reform added 
a year at the beginning level, modifying these grade groupings as 
follows: one through four, five through nine, and ten and eleven. 
As a rule, secondary schools in urban areas combined all grades, 
but rural schools were small, with only four or eight grades in the 
same building. 

The school year ran approximately from September 1 (the offi- 
cial Holiday of Learning) to June 1 . Classes were held Monday 
through Saturday, and total class time ranged from about twenty- 
four hours a week in the primary grades to thirty- six at the upper 
levels (following the reform, the range of class time was reduced 
to twenty to thirty-four hours). At all levels, class periods lasted 
forty-five minutes, with ten-minute breaks and a half-hour for 
lunch. 

The 1986-87 school year marked the wide-scale entry of six-year- 
olds into secondary schools; by September 1987, an estimated 42 
percent of all six-year-olds were enrolled in first grade. In some 
republics, e.g., the Georgian, Lithuanian, and Belorussian, the 
transition was nearly completed; but because of lack of space and 
school equipment (a chronic problem), many schools had to oper- 
ate on double and even triple shifts to accommodate the additional 
new entrants. 

The primary curriculum emphasized reading, writing, and arith- 
metic. Children spent from ten to twelve periods a week learning 
to read and write in Russian or the native language and six peri- 
ods a week on mathematics. The curriculum was rounded out with 
art and music classes, physical education, and vocational training. 
Children attending non-Russian schools — representing a total of 
forty-four different Soviet nationalities in 1987 — began learning 
Russian, the lingua franca in the Soviet Union, in the second grade, 
resulting in an even heavier academic load for them (see Nation- 
alities of the Soviet Union, ch. 4). 

Foreign language study, with English the most popular, began 
in the fifth grade. The curriculum in the intermediate and upper 
classes included courses in literature, history, social studies, geog- 
raphy, mathematics, biology, physics, chemistry, and technical 
drawing. Consistent with the 1984 school reform's call for achiev- 
ing computer literacy, the schools introduced computer training 
in the upper grades in the mid-1980s (see Computers, ch. 9). Voca- 
tional counseling was also introduced in the upper grades in an 
effort to direct more students to pursue training in technical areas 



254 



Typical classroom, Moscow 
Courtesy Irene Steckler 



requiring high-level skills. The new curriculum for grades ten and 
eleven included courses called "Ethics and Psychology of Family 
Life' ' and "Elementary Military Training. ' ' From one to four hours 
per week of "socially beneficial" labor was made compulsory for 
grades two through eleven. 

General secondary schools emphasized mathematics and science; 
science courses were designed not only to teach the fundamentals 
but also to develop the official scientific-materialist worldview. 
Teaching of history and literature was particularly politicized and 
biased, through selection and interpretation, toward inculcation 
of communist values and ideology. As an outgrowth of the de- 
Stalinization effort under Gorbachev, the official Soviet press de- 
nounced elementary and secondary school history books as "lies," 
and, to the students' glee, school authorities canceled final history 
examinations in the spring of 1987. 

On the whole, final examinations were rigorous and compre- 
hensive, and they included both written and oral parts. Performance 
was graded on a number scale of one (failure) to five (outstand- 
ing). The general secondary school diploma was roughly equiva- 
lent to a high school diploma in the United States. Completion of 
this program offered the most direct route to entrance into an in- 
stitution of higher learning. 



255 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

After the eighth or ninth grade, students who chose not to fin- 
ish the final two years of the general secondary school had several 
options. The most popular in the 1980s was enrollment in second- 
ary vocational-technical schools or specialized secondary schools. 
In 1987 nearly 25 percent of students chose the former and almost 
1 3 percent the latter route (more than 60 percent continued in the 
general secondary school). 

The secondary vocational-technical school {srednee professional' no- 
tekhnicheskoe uchilishche — SPTU) combined a full secondary education 
with training for skilled and semiskilled jobs in industry, agricul- 
ture, and office work. In 1986 more than 7,000 such schools were 
in operation; the period of instruction was two or three years. 
Graduates received diplomas and could apply to institutions of 
higher education. An incomplete secondary education trade school 
variant, vocational-technical schools (professionaUno-tekhnicheskie 
uchilishcha — PTU), numbering about 1,000 in the mid-1980s, pro- 
vided training in skilled and semiskilled jobs. 

At the beginning of the 1986-87 school year, 4,506 specialized 
secondary schools (srednie spetsiaVnye zavedeniid), commonly called 
technicums (tekhnikumy), had an enrollment of nearly 4.5 million 
students (2.8 million in regular daytime programs and 1.7 million 
in evening or correspondence schools). The course of study lasted 
from three to four years and combined completion of the final two 
grades of general secondary schooling with training at a paraprofes- 
sional level. Technicums offered over 450 majors, most of them 
in engineering and technical areas, as well as paraprofessional-level 
training in health care, law, teaching, and the arts. Graduates 
received diplomas and could obtain jobs as preschool and primary 
school teachers, paramedics, and technicians; they could also apply 
to higher education institutions. A technicum education cor- 
responded roughly to an associate degree or two years of study in 
an American junior college or community college. 

In 1986 another school reform stressed the specialized secondary 
school system and higher education. The qualitative improvement 
of the technicums, which traditionally had served as an important 
source of technically trained workers, was a key component in 
providing skilled, technically qualified manpower required for the 
success of economic restructuring and modernization. To this end, 
the reform called for revamping both technicums and secondary 
vocational-technical schools to train specialists with diverse tech- 
nical skills and hands-on experience with computer technology and 
automated production processes, as well as a more independent, 
creative, and responsible approach to their jobs. 



256 



Education, Health, and Welfare 



Special Education 

Special schools included those for physically and mentally handi- 
capped children as well as those for intellectually and artistically 
gifted youth. They also included military schools for secondary- 
level cadet training. 

In 1987 about 500,000 youngsters with mental and/or physical 
impairments were enrolled in 2,700 schools designed to meet their 
special needs. Schools for the mentally retarded strived to help chil- 
dren acquire as much of a general or vocational education as their 
abilities permitted and also encouraged them to become as self- 
reliant as possible. The blind and those with partial sight could 
complete the regular secondary program and/or vocational train- 
ing in schools with a modified curriculum and special physical 
accommodations. There were also schools for deaf children, deaf- 
mutes, and the hearing impaired. 

Universities operated a small number of advanced academic pro- 
grams for exceptionally bright children who demonstrated outstand- 
ing abilities in the sciences and mathematics. Schools also specialized 
in a specific foreign language, for example, English or German. 
About 50 percent of all subjects were taught in the given language. 
These highly prestigious schools provided complete secondary 
schooling, and their graduates were guaranteed entrance into in- 
stitutions of higher learning. 

The Ministry of Culture operated a small network of schools for 
artistically gifted youngsters, which combined regular secondary 
education with intensive training in music, ballet, or the arts. These 
special schools were located primarily in Moscow, Leningrad, and 
other large Soviet cities. 

First established during World War II, military boarding schools 
continued to provide free care and education to war orphans of 
military personnel and to train future officers of the armed forces. 
With enrollments of between 150 to 500 students, the eight Suvorov 
military schools and the Nakhimov Naval School offered a regu- 
lar, general school curriculum supplemented by a heavy load of 
mathematics, political and military training, and physical educa- 
tion. Most graduates of these schools entered higher military in- 
stitutions (see Officers, ch. 18). 

Higher Education 

In 1987 the Soviet Union had 896 institutions of higher learn- 
ing (vysshie uchebnye zavedeniia — VUZy), of which only 69 were 
universities. The remainder included more than 400 pedagogical, 
medical, and social science institutes and art academies and 



257 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

conservatories of music; over 360 institutes of specialized engineer- 
ing and natural sciences; and about 60 polytechnical institutes. 
VUZy were located in major cities, including the union republic 
and autonomous republic capitals, with the highest concentrations 
in Moscow, Leningrad, and Kiev. Enrollment was over 5 million 
students, with nearly 50 percent (2.4 million) attending part time. 
Women made up 56 percent of the student body. Forty-one per- 
cent of the students came from the working (blue-collar) class, 9 
percent from the collective farm (see Glossary) sector, and 50 per- 
cent from families working in the services (white-collar) sector. 

With nearly 587,000 students enrolled, universities offered a 
broad range of disciplines in the arts and sciences, while concen- 
trating on the theoretical aspects of the given field. Institutes and 
polytechnics were more specialized and stressed specific applied 
disciplines, for example, engineering, education, and medicine. 
The approach to higher education traditionally focused on acquir- 
ing knowledge and comprehension rather than on developing skills 
of analysis and evaluation. 

As the country's major scientific and cultural centers, universi- 
ties produced the leading researchers and teachers in the natural 
and mathematical sciences, social and political sciences, and hu- 
manities, e.g., literature and languages. They also developed text- 
books and study guides for disciplines in all institutions of higher 
learning and for university courses in the natural sciences and hu- 
manities. 

On the whole, Soviet society considered universities the most 
prestigious of all institutions of higher learning. Applicants con- 
siderably exceeded openings, and competition for entrance was stiff. 
Officially, acceptance was based on academic merit. In addition 
to successful completion of secondary schooling, prospective en- 
trants had to pass extremely competitive oral and written exami- 
nations, given only once a year, in their area of specialization, as 
well as in Russian and a foreign language. Students commonly 
employed private tutors to prepare for university entrance ex- 
aminations. Beyond this generally accepted practice, other less 
honest methods were used widely and included drawing on per- 
sonal connections of parents and even resorting to bribes. Party 
or Komsomol endorsement strengthened an applicant's chances 
for admission. 

Moscow University, established in 1755, was the Soviet Union's 
largest, most prestigious, and second oldest institution of higher 
learning (the Ukrainian Republic's L'vov University was founded 
in 1661). It comprised seventeen colleges or schools (in Russian, 
fakultety — faculties), divided into 274 departments, each offering 



258 



Turkmen University, Ashkhabad, Turkmen Republic 

Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 

a wide range of related subjects. A major research center, the state 
university had a library of over 6.5 million volumes. A teaching 
staff of about 7,000 full-time and part-time professors and instructors 
taught over 30,000 students (more than half attended on a part- 
time basis). 

Full-time higher education took 4 to 5.5 years of study, depending 
on the area of specialization, for example, 5.5 years for medicine; 
5 years for engineering; 4.5 years for agriculture; and 4 years for 
law, history, journalism, or art. The programs combined lectures, 
seminars, practicums, and research. At the final stage, students 
had to complete an approved thesis and defend their work before 
the State Examination Committee; they also had to pass extensive 
examinations in their field of specialization. Graduates were 
awarded diplomas; depending on the course of study and institu- 
tion, the diploma fell roughly between a bachelor's degree and 
master's degree in the United States. 

Tuition at all institutions of higher learning was free; in the 
1986-87 school year, 78 percent of full-time students received 
monthly stipends ranging from 40 to 70 rubles. Students paid only 
minimum room and board because dormitories (albeit crowded and 
lacking most modern amenities) and cafeterias were subsidized by 
the government. The universities also provided basic medical care 



259 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

at no cost, as well as free passes to rest and recreation homes and 
summer and winter resorts. 

Graduates were expected to repay the government's generosity 
by devoting two or three years to a job assigned by the govern- 
ment. This practice was becoming an increasingly serious problem 
with respect to labor distribution in the 1980s. Among the major 
contributing factors were Gosplan's failure to forecast correctly the 
country's needs for specialized labor cadres (graduates frequentiy 
were assigned to jobs totally unrelated to their areas of specializa- 
tion) and the often outright refusal by graduates to accept jobs in 
undesirable (remote or rural) parts of the country. 

Graduate training could be pursued at all universities and selected 
institutes and polytechnics. Relative to the number of undergradu- 
ates, the number of Soviet graduate students was small, about 
100,000 in the mid-1980s. Many pursued their studies on a part- 
time basis while continuing to work in their field. 

Two advanced degrees, the candidate of science and the doctor 
of science (kandidat nauk and doktor nauk), were available. To be ad- 
mitted to a course of study for the candidate degree, applicants had 
to pass competitive examinations in a foreign language, philosophy 
(primarily Marxism-Leninism), and the field of specialization. Com- 
pletion of this degree required three years of course work, training 
and research, and a dissertation dealing with an original topic and 
representing a significant contribution to the given field. The thesis 
had to be defended publicly before an academic panel and was pub- 
lished. In the 1980s, about 500,000 specialists, primarily university 
and institute faculty staff and members of the scientific and research 
community, held candidate degrees. These degrees might be equated 
to the master's and doctor of philosophy degrees in the United States, 
depending on the specialization and the institution attended. 

A much smaller group (fewer than 45,000) of scholars and sci- 
entists held a doctor of science degree, also commonly called a 
doktorat. It was conferred on a selective basis to well-established ex- 
perts whose considerable research and publications represented 
original major contributions to their specialized areas. Doctoral 
work was generally part of the individual's professional or teach- 
ing activity. A one-year paid leave of absence was granted for the 
writing and defense of a doctoral thesis. The doctorate was also 
sometimes conferred for outstanding past achievements. Accord- 
ing to Vadim Medish, holders of this advanced degree represented 
"the elite of the Soviet scientific establishment and academe." 

Teacher Training 

Soviet society generally held the teaching profession in high es- 
teem, continuing the long prerevolutionary tradition, although 



260 



Education, Health, and Welfare 



teachers' salaries were not commensurate in this regard. With start- 
ing pay as low as 140 to 150 rubles per month (compared with the 
average worker's salary of 200 rubles), teachers' salaries, especially 
at the primary and secondary school levels, were on the lower rungs 
of the pay scale. The most common Western explanation for this 
disparity was the preponderance of women in the field. In 1987 
nearly three-fourths of the more than 2.6 million secondary school 
teachers and school directors were women. Among secondary school 
teachers, 77.7 percent had completed higher education, 16.3 per- 
cent had completed secondary school teacher training, 3.5 percent 
had completed a portion of their higher education, and 2.5 per- 
cent had completed specialized or general secondary education. 

In the 1986-87 school year, more than 2 million students were 
enrolled in teacher training programs in about 400 specialized 
secondary- school teachers' schools and more than 200 pedagogi- 
cal institutes. Teacher training focused on the chosen specialty; a 
significant amount of time was devoted to the study of Marxism- 
Leninism, as well as courses in education and applied psychology. 
Because the university curriculum included courses in teaching 
methodology, university graduates also often taught upper-level 
secondary grades. 

The salaries and prestige of teachers at universities, institutions 
of higher learning, and specialized secondary schools were consider- 
ably higher than those of general secondary- school teachers. About 
750,000 professors and instructors, of whom only about one-third 
were women, belonged to this elite group of professionals. 

Quality, Reform, and Funding 

A "report card" for Soviet education in the 1980s based on com- 
ments from government leaders, educators, and rank-and-file 
teachers, as well as from the public at large, indicated the schools 
were failing in serious ways. The picture that emerged from arti- 
cles published in the Soviet press revealed inadequate facilities, 
crowded classrooms, and schools operating on two- and even three- 
shift schedules. Shortages of school materials and equipment were 
serious. The quality of teaching was often low. These deficiencies 
were particularly acute in rural areas and in the Soviet Central 
Asian republics. Abuses, such as cheating by students and grade 
inflation by many teachers, were widespread as well. The schools 
were failing to meet the nation's labor needs: shortages of adequately 
skilled workers existed in almost every sector of the economy, and, 
although institutions of higher learning were graduating large 
numbers of engineers and specialists, their training was theoreti- 
cal and narrow and lacked practical applicability. These limitations, 



261 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

together with excessive bureaucracy, led to poor performance (see 
The Administration of Science and Technology, ch. 16). Indus- 
trial accidents, most notably the Chernobyl' nuclear power plant 
accident, were openly attributed to inappropriate training and tech- 
nical incompetence. 

The schools were failing as well in the task of inculcating youth 
with Marxist-Leninist ideals and socialist morality. Young people 
were becoming increasingly cynical about official ideology; they 
were motivated more and more by the pursuits of material things, 
personal comforts, societal status, and privilege. Moreover, the 
school system's emphasis on uniformity and conformity, rote learn- 
ing, and memorization quashed students' creativity and the de- 
velopment of critical thinking and individual responsibility. 

The 1984 reform of the general and vocational schools together 
with the 1 986 reform of higher and specialized secondary educa- 
tion aimed at fundamental perestroika (restructuring) and demo- 
kratizatsiia (democratization) of the education system. The Soviet 
leadership saw the role of teachers as central to this endeavor; in 
addition to increased wages, they promised that teachers would have 
greater autonomy and flexibility and that the "command mental- 
ity, formalism, and overbureaucratization" produced by the multi- 
layered administrative bureaucracies would be eradicated. Articles 
in the official Soviet press called for the "teacher-creator" to take 
the "path of freedom," with a "freely searching mind . . . tied 
to no one and to no thing." 

Implementation of these reforms would require major increases 
in funding, which in the mid-1980s was about 12 billion rubles for 
general secondary schools. The state spent about 1,200 rubles per 
student for higher education and 780 rubles for secondary special- 
ized study. Calling allocation of less than 8 percent of a nation's 
income to education a sign of societal degradation, Soviet educa- 
tion specialists expressed alarm that the country was currently al- 
locating only about 4 percent of its national income to its schools. 
But the greater, and perhaps insurmountable, obstacle to genuine 
reform of education in the 1980s remained the overriding impor- 
tance assigned to ideological purity in all aspects of schooling. 

Health Care 

The Soviet system of socialized medicine, introduced during the 
Stalin era, emphasized "quantitative" expansion. The system was 
driven by three basic underlying principles: provision by govern- 
ment health institutions of readily available and free, qualified med- 
ical care to all citizens; an emphasis on the prevention of illness; 
and the related goal of guaranteeing a healthy labor force for the 



262 



Education, Health, and Welfare 

nation's economy. Indeed, the individual citizen's health was 
viewed not only as a personal matter "but as part of the national 
wealth." 

In the mid-1980s, the government operated a huge network of 
neighborhood and work site clinics to provide readily accessible 
primary care and large hospitals and polyclinic complexes for 
diagnosis and treatment of more complicated illnesses and for sur- 
gery. Health care facilities included numerous women's consulta- 
tion centers and pediatric clinics, emergency ambulance services, 
and sanatoriums and rest homes for extended and short-term ther- 
apy and relaxation. Psychiatric care remained the most outdated 
and abuse-ridden area of the country's medical system. 

The mid-1980s were marked by growing concern on the part of of- 
ficials and the public over the serious decline in the country's health 
and the low quality of medical services available to the general popu- 
lace. In addition to Gorbachev's war against alcoholism, which was 
seen as a principal contributing factor in increased male mortality 
rates, reforms in the 1980s called for eliminating overbureaucrati- 
zation of medical services, improving medical training and sala- 
ries, expanding fee-for- service care, and significantly increasing 
funding to improve the quality of health care nationwide. 

Provision of Medical Care 

Having emphasized quantitative expansion of medical services, 
the Soviet Union, by the 1980s, took first place worldwide with 
respect to the number of hospital beds and physicians per 10,000 
people and had in place a huge network of hospitals, polyclinics, 
consultation centers, and emergency first-aid stations throughout 
the country. As in the education system, administration and con- 
trol of these numerous medical facilities was carried out by a 
centralized, hierarchically structured government apparatus. In 
cooperation and consultation with CPSU organs, the Ministry of 
Health set basic policies and plans for the entire nationwide health 
care system. These in turn were transmitted through the adminis- 
trative chain of command, starting with the republic-level health 
ministries down through the territorial, regional, district, municipal, 
and local levels. 

In coordination with Gosplan, the Ministry of Health developed 
nationwide annual programs for all aspects of health care services. 
The ministry's planning effort reflected an overwhelming concern 
"with numbers and complex formulas," such as setting norms, 
standards, and quotas with virtually no flexibility, spelling out the 
number of new 1,000-bed hospitals to be built, the number of 



263 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

patient visits and medical exams to be performed, and even the 
number of sutures per given type and size of laceration. 

The numerous administrative entities and planning offices 
spawned a huge bureaucracy, with all the attendant problems of 
overbureaucratization, red tape, and paper deluge. Most affected 
and afflicted were physicians, who devoted 50 percent of their time 
to filling out medical forms and documentation. 

A large portion of the Soviet annual health care budget (about 
18 billion rubles) was allotted to construction of a vast and com- 
plex network of medical facilities, including polyclinics, consulta- 
tion and dispensary centers, emergency first-aid stations and 
ambulance services, hospitals, and sanatoriums. In 1986 more than 
40,000 polyclinics provided primary medical care on an outpatient 
basis. They ranged in size from huge urban complexes staffed by 
hundreds of physicians and responsible for the health care needs 
of up to 50,000 people, to small rural clinics consisting of several 
examination rooms and three or four doctors, whose training was 
often at the physician's assistant or paramedic (fel'dsher) level. 

Generally, the first place turned to for medical assistance was 
the polyclinic. Individuals and families were assigned to a specific 
polyclinic, based on their place of residence, and could not choose 
their physician within the polyclinic system. Outpatient services 
stressed prevention and provided only the most basic medical treat- 
ment, including preliminary diagnosis and evaluation by a gen- 
eral practitioner or internist (tevrapet). If the patient's condition was 
determined to be a more serious or complicated one (hypertension, 
heart disease, or cancer, for example), the individual usually was 
referred to another specialist and/or was hospitalized for more ex- 
tensive diagnosis and treatment. The polyclinic system was deliver- 
ing 90 percent of the country's medical care in the 1980s. 

An important facet of medical care was the provision of services 
at the place of work, reflecting the country's focus on maintaining 
a healthy labor force. Large production enterprises (see Glossary), 
factories, and plants, as well as many other institutions, such as 
research facilities and universities, had their own clinics or medi- 
cal units. The railroad workers' union operated its own autono- 
mous health care system, including rest homes and sanatoriums. 

Consonant with the nation's concern with worker productivity 
and loss of valuable production time, workplace clinics allowed 
workers to get medical attention without leaving the work site. They 
also monitored and controlled worker absenteeism through issu- 
ance of sick leave certificates. In 1986 approximately 4 million work- 
ers (about 3 percent of the total work force) were on sick leave each 



264 



Schoolchildren in Vyborg, Russian Republic 
Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 

day; about 700,000 of them, mostly women, stayed home to care 
for sick children. 

Nationwide, in 1986 there were 23,500 hospitals with more than 
3.6 million beds. In an effort to eliminate duplication of medical 
services by combining general and specialized hospital care, be- 
ginning in the mid-1970s the Ministry of Health began building 
large urban hospital complexes that provided specialized care in 
the hospital and on an outpatient basis. A 1,600-bed hospital was 
built in Novosibirsk; Rostov-na-Donu had a 1,700-bed hospital 
tower; huge multidepartment hospitals appeared in other cities as 
well. 

Although the thrust of hospital care was to provide diagnosis and 
treatment of more complicated health problems and to provide fa- 
cilities for surgery, people suffering from such minor illnesses as 
influenza or gastroenteritis were often hospitalized. This exacer- 
bated the already serious crowding problem in hospitals despite 
the large number of hospital beds per capita. The situation stemmed 
in part from official specification of exact periods of hospitaliza- 
tion for each and every type of medical problem, for example, ten 
days for childbirth, appendectomy, or gallbladder surgery; two 
weeks for a hysterectomy; and eight weeks for a heart attack. These 
prescribed "recovery" periods were strictly adhered to, even when 



265 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

the patient clearly no longer needed further hospital care. In the 
early 1980s, one-quarter of the population was hospitalized each 
year. The average hospital stay was 15 days, with a nationwide 
average of 2.8 hospital days per person per year (the average hospital 
stay in the United States was 5 days, with 1.2 hospital days per 
person per year). 

The propensity for medically unwarranted, extended hospitali- 
zations reflected old-fashioned practice, the inefficiency of hospi- 
tals (for example, delays in diagnostic tests caused by excessive 
paperwork and shortages in medical equipment), and the difficulty 
for patients to recover at home because of crowded living condi- 
tions. In addition, patients tended to prefer hospitalization to cura- 
tive treatment in the clinics because hospitals were generally better 
equipped and better staffed. 

A pivotal concern of the public health system was the care and 
treatment of women and children. More than 28,000 women's con- 
sultation centers, children's polyclinics, and pediatric hospital fa- 
cilities focused on prevention and cure of women's and children's 
health problems. A number of institutes of pediatrics, obstetrics, 
and gynecology conducted research to improve diagnosis and treat- 
ment of disease and contribute to overall health and well-being, 
especially of pregnant women, infants, and young children. All 
maternity services were free, and women were encouraged to ob- 
tain regular prenatal care; expectant mothers visited maternity clin- 
ics and consultation centers on an average of fourteen to sixteen 
times. About 5 percent of physicians specialized in obstetrics and 
gynecology. Women had ready access to free routine examinations, 
Pap smears, and prenatal care. Abortions were also available on 
demand but sometimes required a small fee. 

The Ministry of Health operated an extensive network of emer- 
gency first-aid facilities. This ''rapid medical assistance" {skoraia 
meditsinskaia pomoshch') system consisted of more than 5,000 emer- 
gency first-aid stations and included 7,700 specialized ambulance 
teams. Dialing "03" on any telephone (pay telephones did not re- 
quire the usual 2 kopek coin) called out an ambulance {skoraia, as 
it was popularly called). Most often ambulances were equipped with 
only the barest first-aid basics: stretcher, splints and fracture boards, 
oxygen equipment. But specialized antitrauma ambulances with 
portable equipment, such as an electrocardiograph, electric heart 
defibrillator, and anesthesia equipment were available for major 
emergencies. After administration of first aid, patients with major 
medical problems or severe trauma were taken to special emer- 
gency hospitals because most regular hospitals were not equipped 



266 



Education, Health, and Welfare 



with emergency rooms. In the early 1980s, the average ambulance 
arrival time was eight minutes in Moscow and eleven in Leningrad. 

Rounding out the nation's health care system, and giving it a 
uniquely Soviet coloration, was the country's large network of 
sanatoriums, rest homes, and health resorts, which was both an 
integral part of Soviet health care and extremely popular among 
the people. Labor unions controlled about 80 percent of the sanato- 
riums; generally, a person's place of work granted the highly desir- 
able putevka (ticket) to such facilities. Some sanatoriums were 
specialized, providing therapy for children, diabetics, or hyperten- 
sives; many health resorts offered mud baths, mineral springs, and 
herbal therapies; all of them offered a much- welcomed period of 
rest and recreation in pleasant natural surroundings along seacoasts 
and in forests with fresh air. Demand for such facilities, dubbed 
"functional equivalents of tranquilizers" by one Western observer, 
far exceeded availability. In 1986 over 15,800 sanatoriums and rest 
homes served more than 50.3 million people, less than 20 percent 
of the population. 

The most outdated and abuse-ridden area of health protection 
was the system of psychiatric services. In the mid-1980s, psychiatric 
care continued to operate primarily on the outdated principles on 
which it was originally based in the 1950s: Pavlovian (conditioned- 
response) psychology, a black-and-white approach to diagnosis of 
mental illness, heavy reliance on psychotropic drug therapies, very 
little practice of individual or group counseling, and an emphasis 
on work as the best form of treatment and therapy. The average 
citizen avoided seeking psychiatric help, convinced it was "better 
to suffer" than have one's life ruined — an almost certain outcome 
of Soviet psychiatric clinics and services. 

Among the corrupt practices (including bribery and blatant dis- 
regard of individual rights), the gravest and most infamous abuses 
in Soviet psychiatric medicine were political, namely, using men- 
tal hospitals as prisons for political dissenters. Along with schizo- 
phrenics and violent prisoners, dissenters were institutionalized in 
special psychiatric hospital-prisons operated by the Ministry of 
Internal Affairs (see The Ministry of Internal Affairs, ch. 19). Any- 
one who actively disagreed with the official Soviet ideology could 
be easily and swiftly declared "insane" by a committee of psy- 
chiatrists, locked up in a mental institution, and subjected to com- 
pulsory treatment with powerful, at times permanently damaging, 
psychotropic drugs. In the mid-1980s, estimates of the total num- 
ber of political prisoners in Soviet psychiatric facilities numbered 
from 1,000 to several thousand. 



267 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

A harbinger of possible reform of the psychiatric system came 
in January 1988 with the issuance of a decree by the Presidium 
of the Supreme Soviet transferring the special psychiatric hospi- 
tals from the Ministry of Internal Affairs to the Ministry of Health, 
which operated a system of regular psychiatric hospitals and poly- 
clinics. A number of government- sponsored private psychiatric 
clinics offered slightly better levels of therapy and counseling, for 
a fee. 

In 1985 Soviet officials began publishing limited statistics on the 
incidence of mental illness among the population, reporting 335 
cases of schizophrenia per 100,000 people and over 1.3 million chil- 
dren suffering from mental retardation. A total of 335,200 hospi- 
tal beds were devoted to psychiatric care in 1986, compared with 
863,000 for general medicine, 526,900 for surgery, and 411,500 
for pediatrics. 

Between 1960 and 1986, the number of physicians and dentists 
increased from 400,000 to 1.2 million, and mid-level personnel 
increased from 1.4 to 3.2 million. Medical training for physicians 
(vrachi) required six or seven years. The emphasis was on practical 
training with little exposure to basic research or pure science (of 
ninety-two medical institutes, only nine were attached to univer- 
sities). Beginning in the 1970s, specialization began early, in the 
third year, and became increasingly more narrow, resulting in a 
serious decline in the number and quality of general or family prac- 
titioners. The majority of doctors were women. As was the case 
in teaching and other social services areas, their salaries were low 
(in the mid-1980s, physicians earned about 180 to 200 rubles per 
month compared with 200 rubles per month for industrial workers). 

Mid-level medical personnel included physician's assistants, or 
paramedics, midwives, and nurses. These categories required only 
two years of practical training and little or no scientific background. 
These mid-level health practitioners frequently served as physician 
surrogates in rural areas, where the shortage of trained physicians 
was serious. 

Although the underlying principle of Soviet socialized medicine 
was equality of care and access, the reality was a multitiered, highly 
stratified system of care and facilities. The disparity between the 
services provided to the general populace and to special groups was 
great. The so-called "fourth department" of the Ministry of Health 
operated a separate network of clinics, hospitals, and sanatoriums 
exclusively for top party and government officials as well as for 
other elite groups, such as writers, musicians, artists, and actors. 
These special facilities were far superior to those found in ordi- 
nary health care networks. They provided the best care, were staffed 



268 



Education, Health, and Welfare 



by top-ranking physicians, and had the latest equipment, includ- 
ing Western-made modern diagnostic and treatment units. The 
medical care available in cities, which tended to have the better 
equipped hospitals and clinics, differed considerably from that avail- 
able in rural areas, which often lacked specially constructed medi- 
cal facilities. 

Similarly, although in principle health care was free, citizens often 
paid money or gave bribes to receive better treatment. Moreover, 
hospital patients routinely paid for basic services, such as changes 
of bed linen and meals. 

Declining Health Care in the 1970s and 1980s 

After Evgenii Chazov became the minister of health in Febru- 
ary 1987 and Gorbachev's policy of glasnosV was extended to the 
realm of health care, Soviet authorities finally acknowledged what 
Western observers had suspected for some time, namely, that major 
health indicators depicted a disturbing picture of the nation's health. 
Statistics for the 1970s and 1980s showed rising infant mortality 
rates, falling life expectancy (particularly among the male popula- 
tion), increases in infectious diseases, rises in sexually transmitted 
illnesses, and a high rate of new cases of tuberculosis among chil- 
dren and adolescents. 

Statistics on the major causes of death were not published for 
the total population but were published for the working- age group 
(sixteen to fifty-nine for men and sixteen to fifty-four for women). 
In 1986 the greatest number of deaths among those of working age 
(the total number of deaths was 401 per 100,000) was caused by 
cardiovascular disease (120 per 100,000); accidents, poisoning, and 
traumas (109 per 100,000); cancer (94 per 100,000); and lung dis- 
ease (20 per 100,000). On a population- wide basis, official Soviet 
sources ranked the major causes of death somewhat differently: 
cardiovascular diseases, malignant tumors, and accidents and in- 
juries. Statistics on sex-specific death rates and cause of death by 
age-group have not been published since the early 1970s. 

A key contributing factor in the major causes of death, particu- 
larly among the male population, was the high level of alcoholism — 
a long-standing problem, especially among the Slavic peoples (Rus- 
sian, Ukrainian, and Belorussian). Alcoholism was often referred 
to as the * 'third disease," after cardiovascular illness and cancer. 
Soviet health organizations and police records put the total num- 
ber of alcoholics at over 4.5 million, but Western experts contended 
that this number applied only to those at the most advanced stage 
of alcoholism and that in 1987 the real number of alcoholics was 
at least 20 million. 



269 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Soon after coming to power, Gorbachev launched the most mas- 
sive antialcohol campaign in Soviet history and voiced his concern 
not only about the health problems stemming from alcohol abuse 
but also about the losses in labor productivity (up to 15 percent) 
and the increased divorce rate. The drive appeared to have an 
almost immediate effect on the incidence of diseases directly re- 
lated to alcohol: for example, cirrhosis of the liver and alcohol 
poisoning decreased from 47.3 per 1,000 in 1984 to 23.3 per 1,000 
in 1986. The biggest declines were in the Russian and Ukrainian 
republics, where the problem was the most widespread. Some at- 
tributed the modest rise in male life expectancy between 1985 and 
1986 to success in the battle against the "green snake," a popular 
Russian term for vodka. But to counter the major cut in govern- 
ment production of alcohol, people distilled their own alcoholic 
beverages at home. One-third of illicit alcohol reportedly was 
produced using government agricultural facilities. 

To succeed in the battle against alcoholism, Soviet health care 
had to expand significantly its alcohol-abuse treatment and edu- 
cation programs. Of particular concern was increased alcohol con- 
sumption and another major health problem — smoking — among 
women and teenagers. The rise in infant mortality, as well as other 
early childhood disease and abnormalities (8 to 10 percent of chil- 
dren reportedly suffered from congenital or infantile abnormali- 
ties), was linked to increased drinking and smoking among females 
in their childbearing years. 

A Soviet statistical study (based on a 1987 survey of 62,000 fami- 
lies) indicated that about 70 million people smoked — nearly 70 per- 
cent of men and nearly 5 percent of women more than eighteen 
years of age. Although an antismoking campaign was also under 
way in the 1980s, it was on a much smaller scale than the cam- 
paign against alcohol, and the government did far less to decrease 
production of tobacco products. In fact, output reached 441 bil- 
lion cigarettes in 1987, which was an increase of 23 percent over 
1970 production. 

In addition to increased infant mortality rates in the 1970s and 
1980s, the Caucasian and Central Asian republics experienced a 
rise in infectious diseases, such as typhoid fever and other gastro- 
intestinal illnesses, and viral hepatitis. Poor sanitation and con- 
taminated water supplies were largely responsible for outbreaks of 
typhoid fever and other gastrointestinal infections; the lack of dis- 
posable syringes was blamed for the upsurge in hepatitis infections. 

Deteriorating environmental factors, crowded living conditions, 
and poor nutrition were seen as principal contributors to negative 
health trends. But the low quality of health care available to the 



270 



Education, Health, and Welfare 



general populace was a major culprit and stemmed in large mea- 
sure from the widespread lack of modern medical equipment, tech- 
nology, and pharmaceuticals. For example, the low life expectancy, 
particularly for males, was linked in part to the lack of medical 
equipment needed to perform bypass surgery and angioplasty proce- 
dures in the treatment of heart disease. Indeed, deaths from cardio- 
vascular diseases increased from 88 per 100,000 to 120 per 100,000 
between 1970 and 1986. 

With glasnost ' came publication in Soviet newspapers of numer- 
ous articles and letters — written by physicians as well as by ordi- 
nary citizens — highlighting the crisis in the country's health care 
system. Frequendy attacked was the severe shortage of modern med- 
ical equipment in medical facilities; for example, women's con- 
sultation centers had no fetal heart monitors, ultrasound units, or 
equipment for monitoring labor and delivery, resulting in thou- 
sands of additional infant deaths. Poor training of physicians was 
singled out as the cause of 600 to 700 deaths of women each year 
in childbirth and following abortions in the Russian Republic alone. 
The poor treatment and care of terminally ill cancer patients was 
openly decried; mentioned were the serious shortage of beds in 
cancer wards, lack of painkillers, blatant neglect, and absence 
of compassion from medical staff. The widespread and long- 
standing practice of exchanging bribes and gifts for slightly better 
medical care and attention was specifically attacked, as were over- 
bureaucratization and its major product, "paper fever," and the 
common practice of falsifying medical statistics to fulfill planned 
quantitative quotas. People also wrote to newspapers document- 
ing personal tragedies involving the deaths of small children — deaths 
that need not have happened and that were caused by gross negli- 
gence on the part of hospital staff and physicians. 

Glasnost' brought into the open other previously taboo subjects, 
as the press began to publish articles on drug abuse, venereal dis- 
ease, and even acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). 
Drug abuse and venereal disease were reported to be on the rise 
in some regions of the country, most notably in the Georgian 
Republic. The number of drug addicts nationwide varied depending 
upon the official source: the Ministry of Health claimed 50,000; 
police records documented 130,000 addicts. 

In early 1987, the Soviet press began publishing a number of 
articles about AIDS, referring to the deadly virus by the Russian 
acronym SPID (sindrom priobretennogo immunodefitsita). Although litde 
concrete advice was being made available to the public regarding 
prevention and high-risk groups, by the summer of 1987 a num- 
ber of AIDS testing centers had been opened, and a Moscow center 



271 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

reportedly was testing about 100 people each day. Claiming the 
infection was "imported," Soviet medical authorities required man- 
datory testing of all foreign students in the country; they also re- 
quired compulsory testing of suspected Soviet carriers, namely, 
prostitutes and members of other high-risk groups. In August 1987, 
the Supreme Soviet passed the strictest anti-AIDS law in the world, 
making the knowing transmittal of an AIDS infection a criminal 
offense punishable by up to eight years in prison. 

By the time the law was passed, 130 AIDS cases were officially 
registered; only 19 of these were said to be Soviet citizens. But 
numerous Soviet sources indicated the actual number of cases was 
in the thousands; this figure still represented a minuscule percen- 
tage of the population compared with AIDS incidence in the United 
States and other Western countries. Nevertheless, Soviet virology 
specialists foresaw serious spread of the infection, noting that domes- 
tic production of AIDS testing equipment had to be significantly 
increased. They claimed that the 1987 output of 2 million units 
was 8 million short of the required number and anticipated that 
20 million test sets would be needed within two or three years. Public 
education about AIDS transmission and infection was hampered 
by general Soviet prudishness about sex, but of greater importance 
was the fact that the government ranked homosexual activity and 
prostitution as criminal offenses punishable by imprisonment, which 
meant that these high-risk groups were unlikely to cooperate in the 
batde against AIDS. The chronic shortage of condoms (which Soviet 
medical officials euphemistically called "Article Number 2") fur- 
ther increased the threat of the spread of AIDS among the Soviet 
population. But the widespread shortage of disposable hypodermic 
syringes in hospitals and clinics, which often led to the repeated 
use of unsterilized needles, posed the greatest danger to checking 
the spread of AIDS in the Soviet Union. This fact was shockingly 
demonstrated by the tragic case involving the infection with the 
AIDS virus of up to forty-one children and eight mothers in late 
1988 at a children's hospital in the Kalmyk Autonomous Republic. 

Major reforms of the health care system were announced in 
November 1987, underscoring the growing alarm over the nation's 
deteriorating health. The reforms reaffirmed the antialcohol and 
antismoking campaigns and called for improving personal hygiene 
and physical fitness training of the population in general and of 
schoolchildren in particular. The reforms stressed improving the 
quality of care, as opposed to the past practice of quantitative ex- 
pansion alone, and advocated increasing the salaries and prestige 
of medical personnel. They called for shifting physician training 
from the narrow specialization of the past to family or general 



272 



Education, Health, and Welfare 



practice, as well as expansion and improvement in certification of 
medical school graduates and periodic recertification of practicing 
physicians. The central role of mid-level medical personnel — such 
as physician's assistants, nurses, and pharmacists — was reaffirmed, 
and improvements in the quality of their training were promised. 
The quality of medical teaching was to be raised by directly in- 
volving medical teachers in research and development in the coun- 
try's leading medical research institutes. The reforms also stressed 
expansion of biotechnical and other advanced medical research and 
called for increasing domestic production of the most modern med- 
ical equipment, high-quality pharmaceuticals, and biotechnology 
products. 

Special efforts were planned to rectify the low level of health care 
found in rural areas, where 80 percent of the 18,000 polyclinics 
and outpatient facilities did not have specially constructed medi- 
cal buildings. A majority — 65 percent — of regional hospitals in rural 
areas had no hot water supply; 27 percent were not equipped with 
sanitation systems; and 17 percent had no water supply at all. To 
correct these serious deficiencies, plans called for construction of 
more than 14,000 outpatient clinics equipped with pharmacies, as 
well as living quarters for medical and pharmaceutical personnel. 
Along with continued emphasis on providing outpatient polyclinic 
care, a significant expansion — a fivefold increase — of fee-for-services 
medical care was planned by the year 2000. 

The country's need for maternity wards and pediatric facilities 
was to be met by 1995; the population's outpatient and hospital 
needs were to be met by the year 2000. To this end, the reforms 
called for a significant increase — between 100 and 150 percent — 
in capital expenditures for renovation, equipment, and construc- 
tion of polyclinics and hospital complexes. A final goal was the 
establishment by the year 2000 of a ' 'unified system of health care" 
for the entire population. 

To achieve these ambitious goals and to ensure the full health 
of its population, the Soviet Union would have to increase sub- 
stantially the level of funding allocated to its health care system. 
Since the 1960s, the percentage of the gross national product 
(GNP — see Glossary) spent on health had continuously eroded, 
dropping from a high of 6.6 percent of GNP in 1960 to about 4 
percent in the mid-1980s. (In 1986 the United States spent 11.1 
percent; the Federal Republic of Germany [West Germany], 8.1 
percent; and Britain, 6.2 percent of GNP for medical services.) 
According to Minister of Health Chazov, more than 8 percent 
would be needed to meet fully the medical needs of the entire Soviet 
population. 



273 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Welfare 

In the 1980s, the Soviet government maintained a comprehen- 
sive system of social security and social insurance that included 
old-age retirement and veterans pensions, disability benefits and 
sick leave compensation, maternity leave and allowances, and sub- 
sidies to multichildren and low-income families. Soviet workers did 
not contribute directly to their social security and insurance cover- 
age; funding was provided by the government and from compul- 
sory deductions from industrial and agricultural enterprises. Most 
welfare funds were spent on retirement pensions and disability 
benefits. 

Pension System 

In 1987 the Soviet Union had 56.8 million pensioners; of this 
number, 40.5 million were retired with full pensions on the basis 
of twenty years of service and age eligibility — sixty for men and 
fifty-five for women. Reduced pensions were paid to those who met 
the age eligibility requirement and had worked at least five years, 
three of them uninterrupted, just prior to retirement. Miners and 
those working under other arduous or hazardous conditions could 
retire five to ten years earlier. In 1987 Soviet authorities were reduc- 
ing the retirement age for other groups as well. 

Pensions, on the whole, were quite low. The average monthly 
pension in 1986 was 75.1 rubles, with considerable disparity be- 
tween the average monthly pension of blue- and white-collar workers 
(averaging 81.2 rubles for the two categories of workers) and col- 
lective farm workers (48 rubles). In fact, the average pension was 
only slighdy above the unofficial level of poverty — or "underprovi- 
sioning' ' {maloobespechennost') — of 70 rubles per month per person. 
It was likely that millions of pensioners lived under or close to this 
poverty threshold. Indeed, pensioners made up the majority of the 
poor. According to figures published in an official Soviet newspaper, 
in 1985 a minimum of 13.7 million pensioners were receiving pen- 
sions far below 70 rubles per month. About 12 million old-age pen- 
sioners continued to work, many of them in extremely low-paying 
jobs, for example, as cloakroom attendants in restaurants and 
theaters or sweeping metro station interiors and street pavements. 
Retirees who lived with their children (a common situation, given 
the extreme housing shortage) obtained some financial relief and 
in return helped with housework, cooking, and care of small grand- 
children. In 1988 about 1 million pensioners lived alone and were 
by far the worst off, living in almost total neglect and near desti- 
tution. 



274 




Senior citizen resting 
in a Moscow park 
Courtesy Irene Steckler 



\ 



\ 



Not all pensions were this low, however. A special category of 
"personal pensions" could be awarded for outstanding political, 
cultural, scientific, or economic service to the state. In 1988 over 
500,000 personal pensioners, including essentially all of the CPSU 
administrative elite, were receiving pensions of 250 rubles, and even 
up to 450 rubles, per month. A separate but similar retirement 
program, known as long- service pensions, was maintained for some 
groups of white-collar workers, including teachers, academic and 
medical personnel, and military retirees. Lowered retirement ages 
and/or pension augmentations were provided to disabled workers 
and mothers of large families. 

The government operated a small network of homes for the 
elderly, invalids, and disabled children. In 1986 these "total-care" 
facilities accommodated 388,000 people, but another 90,000 were 
on waiting lists. 

In 1988-89 the State Committee for Labor and Social Problems 
(Gosudarstvennyi komitet po trudu i sotsial'nym voprosam — Gos- 
komtrud) was developing a new pension law to replace the outdated 
laws of 1956 and 1964. Although not expected to become fully effec- 
tive before 1991, the new law envisioned a guaranteed subsistence 
wage, a higher ceiling on old-age pensions, and regular cost-of-living 
increases. Workers could also obtain supplemental pension cover- 
age through a voluntary payroll deduction program introduced in 
January 1988 and administered by the Main Administration for State 
Insurance. 



275 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Workers' Compensation 

In the 1980s, workers were covered by disability insurance. In- 
dividuals who were permanently disabled as a result of on-the-job 
injuries received a pension equal to 100 percent of their wages, 
irrespective of their length of service. Compensation for sickness 
or injury causing temporary incapacity to work but unrelated to 
employment required appropriate physician certification of the ill- 
ness or injury. Benefits depended on length of service: 50 percent 
of full wages was paid for fewer than three years of uninterrupted 
work; 80 percent for three to five years; and 100 percent for more 
than eight years. Service in the armed forces, time spent in party 
or government posts, and maternity leave were not considered 
breaks in employment. Sick leave was also paid to workers (usually 
working mothers) who stayed home to care for ill family members. 
In 1987 the government extended the period of paid leave for the 
care of a sick child to fourteen days. 

Maternity allowances were fairly generous. Expectant mothers 
were granted a total of 1 12 days of maternity leave, 56 days before 
and 56 days after the birth of a child, with payment of full wages, 
irrespective of length of employment. The postnatal leave period 
was extended to seventy days for women who had multiple or ab- 
normal births. Mothers were entitled to unpaid leave up to the 
child's first birthday, without a break in their employment record 
and with the guarantee of returning to their original job. 

Other Assistance 

Since the mid- 1940s, the government has provided financial sub- 
sidies to mothers with ' 'many children," meaning two or more. 
This program had three facets: mothers received a lump-sum grant 
upon the birth of the third and each subsequent child; they received 
a monthly subsidy upon the birth of the fourth and each subse- 
quent child; and, beginning with the Eleventh Five- Year- Plan 
(1981-85), one-time maternity grants (50 rubles for the first child 
and 100 for the second) were given to working women or female 
students on a leave-of-absence basis. In 1986 the government paid 
monthly subsidies to almost 2 million mothers having four or more 
children. 

In addition to pensions and financial subsidies, veterans, invalids, 
and multichildren families received a number of nonmonetary 
benefits, such as top consideration for housing, telephones, and 
priority services in shops and restaurants. In 1985 and again in 
1987, the Central Committee of the CPSU, the Council of 
Ministers, and the Ail-Union Central Council of Trade Unions 



276 



Education, Health, and Welfare 



issued resolutions to improve living conditions of the "underprovi- 
sioned," including pensioners, invalids, old people living alone, 
and single-parent families with three or more children under the 
age of eighteen and with an average monthly per capita income 
of 50 rubles (75 rubles in certain regions, for example, the Soviet 
Far East). This program provided free school, sports, and youth 
organization uniforms and free breakfasts for children up to the 
age of sixteen. The resolutions also called for child- support pay- 
ments by the absent parent of at least 20 rubles per month per child 
up to the age of eighteen, as well as a government subsidy of 12 
rubles per month for each child up to the age of eight. Underprovi- 
sioned families were provided free sanatorium and rest-home stays; 
the children were sent to summer youth camps, as well, at govern- 
ment expense. 

Although no official calls for comprehensive restructuring of wel- 
fare programs were made, by 1987 and 1988 the policy of glasnosV 
embraced the topic of poverty in the Soviet Union. Numerous ar- 
ticles appeared in the press reflecting a growing concern — on the 
part of both Soviet officials and the general public — about the num- 
ber of poor in the Soviet Union, estimated in 1988 to include 20 
percent of the population. 

The leadership under Gorbachev fully acknowledged the press- 
ing need for improving the quality and availability of education, 
health care, and welfare services nationwide and seemed genuine- 
ly committed to achieving these objectives by the year 2000. But 
the obstacles to reforms in these spheres were numerous and for- 
midable. The country had to significantly raise funding for these 
programs, and to do so would require a shift in spending priori- 
ties. Moreover, excessive centralization and overbureaucratization 
in the administration of social services had to be overcome. And 
the incompatibility of maintaining ideological purity in all aspects 
of education, on the one hand, and developing in youth the ability 
to think critically, comparatively, and creatively, on the other hand, 
had to be reconciled. 

* * * 

Inside Soviet Schools by Susan Jacoby, an American educator, offers 
a comprehensive view of the upbringing of Soviet youth from in- 
fancy through secondary school. Kitty D. Weaver's Russia's Fu- 
ture examines the role of the youth organizations (Young Octobrists, 
Pioneers, and Komsomol) in the education process. The Making 
of the Soviet Citizen, edited by George Avis, covers school reforms 
of the 1980s, the dual concept of character formation and formal 



277 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



education, the role of political indoctrination, and vocational training. 
Soviet Politics and Education by Frank M. Sorrentino and Frances R. 
Curcio, includes several articles dealing with the role of ideology 
and political indoctrination in Soviet education. Vadim Medish's 
The Soviet Union provides an excellent chapter on the education sys- 
tem, from the nursery school level through the university level. 
Inside Russian Medicine by William A. Knaus, M.D. , an American 
physician who observed Soviet health care first hand, covers poly- 
clinic and hospital care, emergency services, and psychiatric treat- 
ment. The Medical and Pharmaceutical Sectors of the Soviet Economy by 
Christopher Davis discusses the organization and financing of med- 
ical care, the medical industry, pharmaceuticals, and foreign trade 
in medical products. Economic Welfare in the Soviet Union by Alastair 
McAuley discusses the historical background, organization, eligi- 
bility requirements, and payments provided by Soviet welfare pro- 
grams. Poverty in the Soviet Union by Mervyn Matthews includes some 
recent information on old-age pensions and child support payment. 
Matthews also discusses these topics in his article "Aspects of 
Poverty in the Soviet Union." (For further information and com- 
plete citations, see Bibliography.) 



278 



Chapter 7. The Communist Party 



Clockwise from bottom: Gorbachev, Brezhnev, Khrushchev, and Stalin 



THE COMMUNIST PARTY of the Soviet Union (CPSU) 
governs the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Soviet Union). 
In 1917 the party seized power in Russia as the vanguard of the 
working class, and it has continued throughout the Soviet period 
to rule in the name of the proletariat. The party seeks to lead the 
Soviet people to communism, defined by Karl Marx as a classless 
society that contains limitless possibilities for human achievement. 
Toward this end, the party has sought to effect a cultural revolu- 
tion and create a ' 'new Soviet man" bound by the strictures of 
a higher, socialist morality. 

The party's goals require that it control all aspects of Soviet 
government and society in order to infuse political, economic, and 
social policies with the correct ideological content. Vladimir I. 
Lenin, the founder of the Bolshevik (see Glossary) party and the 
leader of the Bolshevik Revolution, justified these controls. Lenin 
formed a party of professional revolutionaries to effect a proletarian 
revolution in Russia. In the late 1980s, however, the party no longer 
sought to transform society and was apparently attempting to with- 
draw itself from day-to-day economic decisions. Nevertheless, it 
continued to exert control through professional management. Mem- 
bers of the party bureaucracy are full-time, paid officials. Other 
party members hold full-time positions in government, industry, 
education, the armed forces, and elsewhere. In addition, Lenin 
argued that the party alone possesses the correct understanding of 
Marxist ideology. Thus, state policies that lack an ideological foun- 
dation threaten to retard society's advance toward communism. 
Hence, only policies sanctioned by the party can contribute to this 
goal. Lenin's position justifies party jurisdiction over the state. The 
CPSU enforces its authority over state bodies from the all-union 
(see Glossary) level to that of the district and town. In the office, 
factory, and farm, the party has established its primary party organi- 
zations (PPOs) to carry out its directives. 

The role of ideology in the political system and the party's ef- 
forts to enforce controls on society demonstrate the party leader- 
ship's continuing efforts to forge unity in the party as well as among 
the Soviet people. Democratic centralism, the method of intraparty 
decision making, directs lower party bodies unconditionally to ex- 
ecute the decisions of higher party bodies. Party forums from the 
town and district levels up to the Central Committee bring together 
party, government, trade union, and economic elites to create a 



281 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

desired consensus among policy makers. Party training, particu- 
larly for officials of the CPSU's permanent bureaucracy, shapes 
a common understanding of problems and apprises students of the 
party's current approaches to ideology, foreign affairs, and domestic 
policy. Party training efforts demand particular attention because 
of the varied national, class, and educational experiences of CPSU 
members. 

The party exercises authority over the government and society 
in several ways. The CPSU has acquired legitimacy for its rule; 
that is, the people acknowledged the party's right to govern them. 
This legitimacy derives from the party's incorporation of elites from 
all parts of society into its ranks, the party's depiction of itself as 
the representative of the forces for progress in the world, and the 
party's postulated goal of creating a full communist society. Para- 
doxically, the party's legitimacy is enhanced by the inclusion of 
certain prerevolutionary Russian traditions into its political style, 
which provides a sense of continuity with the past. A different source 
of authority lies in the power of PPO secretaries to implement party 
policies on the lowest rungs of the Soviet economy. The CPSU 
obligates members participating in nonparty organizations to meet 
regularly and ensure that their organizations fulfill the directives 
the party has set for them. Finally, as part of the nomenklatura sys- 
tem, the party retains appointment power for influential positions 
at all levels of the government hierarchy (higher party bodies hold 
this power over lower party bodies as well). Taken together, the 
legitimacy accorded to it and the prerogatives it possesses enable 
the party to perform its leading role within the Soviet political 
system. 

Lenin's Conception of the Party 

The origins of the CPSU lie in the political thought and tactical 
conceptions of Lenin, who sought to apply Marxism to economi- 
cally backward, politically autocratic Russia. Toward this end, 
Lenin sought to build a highly disciplined, monolithic party of 
professional revolutionaries that was to act as the general staff of 
the proletarian movement in Russia. Lenin argued that this under- 
ground party must subject all aspects of the movement to its con- 
trol so that the actions of the movement might be guided by the 
party's understanding of Marxist theory rather than by spontane- 
ous responses to economic and political oppression. Lenin envisaged 
democratic centralism as the method of internal party decision mak- 
ing best able to combine discipline with the decentralization neces- 
sary to allow lower party organs to adapt to local conditions. 
Democratic centralism calls for free discussion of alternatives, a 



282 



The Communist Party 



vote on the matter at hand, and iron submission of the minority 
to the majority once a decision is taken. As time passed, however, 
centralism gained sway over democracy, allowing the leadership 
to assume dictatorial control over the party. 

Theoretical Underpinnings 

Lenin's ideas about the proletarian revolutionary party differed 
from the ideas of Marx. According to Marx, the working class, 
merely by following its own instincts, would gain rational insight 
into its plight as the downtrodden product of capitalism. Based on 
that insight, Marx held, the workers would bring about a revolu- 
tion leading to their control over the means of production. Fur- 
ther, Marx predicted that the seizure by the proletariat of the means 
of production (land and factories) would lead to a tremendous in- 
crease in productive forces. Freedom from want, said Marx, would 
liberate men's minds. This liberation would usher in a cultural revo- 
lution and the formation of a new personality with unlimited crea- 
tive possibilities. 

As he surveyed the European milieu in the late 1890s, Lenin 
found several problems with the Marxism of his day. Contrary to 
what Marx had predicted, capitalism had strengthened itself over 
the last third of the nineteenth century. The working class in western 
Europe had not become impoverished; rather, its prosperity had 
risen. Hence, the workers and their unions, although continuing 
to press for better wages and working conditions, failed to develop 
the revolutionary class consciousness that Marx had expected. Lenin 
also argued that the division of labor in capitalist society prevented 
the emergence of proletarian class consciousness. Lenin wrote that 
because workers had to labor ten or twelve hours each workday 
in a factory, they had no time to learn the complexities of Marxist 
theory. Finally, in trying to effect revolution in autocratic Russia, 
Lenin also faced the problem of a regime that had outlawed almost 
all political activities. Although the autocracy could not enforce a 
ban on political ideas, until 1905 — when the tsar agreed to the for- 
mation of a national duma (see Glossary) — the tsarist police sup- 
pressed all groups seeking political change, including those with 
a democratic program. 

Based on his observations, Lenin shifted the engine of proletar- 
ian revolution from the working class to a tightly knit party of in- 
tellectuals. Lenin wrote in What Is to Be Done (1902) that the ' 'history 
of all countries bears out the fact that through their own powers 
alone, the working class can develop only a trade-union conscious- 
ness." That is, history had demonstrated that the working class 
could engage in local, spontaneous rebellions to improve its position 



283 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

within the capitalist system but that it lacked the understanding 
of its interests necessary to overthrow that system. Pessimistic about 
the proletariat's ability to acquire class consciousness, Lenin ar- 
gued that the bearers of this consciousness were declasse intellec- 
tuals who made it their vocation to conspire against the capitalist 
system and prepare for the dictatorship of the proletariat. Lenin 
also held that because Marx's thought was set forth in a sophisti- 
cated body of philosophical, economic, and social analysis, a high 
level of intellectual training was required to comprehend it. Hence, 
for Lenin, those who would bring about the revolution must de- 
vote all their energies and resources to understanding the range 
of Marx's thought. They must be professional activists having no 
other duties that might interfere with their efforts to promote revo- 
lution. 

Lenin's final alteration of Marx's thought arose in the course 
of his adaptation of Marxist ideology to the conditions of Russia's 
autocracy. Like other political organizations seeking change in Rus- 
sia, Lenin's organization had to use conspiratorial methods and 
operate underground. Lenin argued for the necessity of confining 
membership in his organization to those who were professionally 
trained in the art of combating the secret police. 

The ethos of Lenin's political thought was to subject first the 
party, then the working class, and finally the people to the politi- 
cally conscious revolutionaries. Only actions informed by conscious- 
ness could promote revolution and the construction of socialism 
and communism in Russia. 

The CPSU continues to regard itself as the institutionalization 
of Marxist- Leninist consciousness in the Soviet Union, and there- 
in lies the justification for the controls it exercises over Soviet soci- 
ety. Article 6 of the 1977 Soviet Constitution refers to the party 
as the "leading and guiding force of Soviet society and the nucleus 
of its political system, of all state organizations and public organi- 
zations." The party, precisely because it is the bearer of Marxist- 
Leninist ideology, determines the general development of society, 
directs domestic and foreign policy, and "imparts a planned, sys- 
tematic, and theoretically substantiated character" to the struggle 
of the Soviet people for the victory of communism. 

Democratic Centralism 

Democratic centralism involves several interrelated principles: 
the election of all leadership organs of the party from bottom to 
top; periodic accounting of party organs before their membership 
and before superior organs; strict party discipline and the subor- 
dination of the minority to the majority; unconditional obligation 



284 



Lenin Mausoleum, Red Square, Moscow 
House where Lenin was born, Ulyanovsk 
(formerly Simbirsk), Russian Republic 
Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 



285 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

by lower party bodies to carry out decisions made by higher party 
bodies; a collective approach to the work of all organizations and 
leadership organs of the party; and the personal responsibility of 
all communists to implement party directives. 

According to American specialist on Soviet affairs Alfred G. 
Meyer, democratic centralism is primarily centralism under a thin 
veil of democracy. Democratic centralism requires unanimity on 
the part of the membership. The concept requires full discussion 
of policy alternatives before the organization, as guided by the 
leadership, makes a decision. Once an alternative has been voted 
upon, however, the decision must be accepted by all. In principle, 
dissent is possible, but it is allowed only before a decision becomes 
party policy. After the party makes a decision, party norms dis- 
courage criticism of the manner of execution because such criti- 
cism might threaten the party's leading role in Soviet society. 

The principles of democratic centralism contradict one another. 
One contradiction concerns the locus of decision making. Demo- 
cratic centralism prescribes a collective approach to the work of 
all organizations, which connotes participation of all party mem- 
bers in decision making. Yet, democratic centralism also holds that 
criticism of agreed-upon policies is permissible only for the top 
leadership, not for rank-and-file party members. Hence, discus- 
sion of these policies can take place only after the leadership has 
decided to permit it. The leadership will not allow discussions of 
failed policies, for fear that such discussions will undermine its power 
and authority. 

A second contradiction concerns the issue of accountability. 
Democratic centralism holds that lower party bodies elect higher 
party bodies and that the latter are accountable to the former. 
Nevertheless, democratic centralism also prescribes the uncondi- 
tional subordination of lower party bodies to higher party bodies. 
In reality, superiors appoint those who nominally elect them to their 
positions and tell them what decisions to make (see Nomenklatura, 
this ch.). 

Democratic centralism undermines intraparty democracy because 
the party has formally proscribed factions. The Tenth Party Con- 
gress in 1921 adopted a ' 'temporary" ban on factions in response 
to the Kronshtadt Rebellion (see Revolutions and Civil War, ch. 2). 
In 1989 this ban remained in effect. Every party member has the 
right to express an opinion in the party organization to which he 
or she belongs. Before a decision is taken, however, party mem- 
bers cannot appeal to other members in support of a given posi- 
tion. Moreover, party members cannot engage in vote trading. In 
democratic systems, a party member holding a minority position 



286 



Banner across a Moscow 
street reflects the regime's 
policies in 1989. 
Breads, "PERESTROIKA, 
DEMOKRA TIZA TSIIA, 
GLASNOST'. " 
Courtesy Jonathan Tetzlaff 



May Day banner 
depicting Lenin, 
Engels, and Marx, 
Red Square, Moscow 
Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

on an issue can exercise influence if allowed to organize people with 
similar views and if allowed the opportunity to persuade others. 
Without these opportunities, democratic procedures remain an 
empty formality. 

Devoid of democratic content, the political and organizational 
logic of democratic centralism contributed to the emergence of dic- 
tatorship in the Soviet Union. Despite the formal ban, in the early 
1920s factions emerged in the party because Lenin failed to work 
out orderly procedures for leadership succession (see The Era of 
the New Economic Policy, ch. 2). In the absence of these proce- 
dures, new leaders had to attempt to cloak their policies in the man- 
tle of ideological orthodoxy. To prevent criticism from rivals, the 
new leader could label real and potential opponents a faction and, 
according to the Party Rules (see Glossary), which banned factions, 
take steps to remove them from the party. For example, Nikita 
S. Khrushchev took these steps against his opponents in 1957 (see 
Collective Leadership and the Rise of Khrushchev, ch. 2). The 
leader thus could eliminate real and potential rivals, but ultimately, 
however, only success in action could prove a leader's policies cor- 
rect. Success in action required the commitment of the party, and 
commitment of the party demanded that ordinary party members 
perceive that the leader possessed infallible judgment. Democratic 
centralism provided a necessary condition for the leader's claim 
to infallibility because it prevented ordinary party members from 
criticizing the policies of the party elite. 

Party Legitimacy 

Western political scientists define legitimacy as the acceptance 
by the people of their government's right to rule. Legitimacy 
emerges from a broad range of sources. In democratic countries, 
the citizenry holds governments legitimate because citizens par- 
ticipate in the selection of their rulers, and these governments are 
subject to laws that the people or their representatives have made. 
Tradition also is a persuasive source of legitimation because it places 
the origins of institutions and political values in a distant and mythi- 
cal past. Other governments may acquire legitimacy because they 
have proved themselves able to ensure the well-being of their peo- 
ple. Legitimacy also may emanate from an ideology (such as com- 
munism, fascism, religious orthodoxy, and nationalism) whose 
adherents portray it as the key to understanding human history 
and resolving all social problems. In reality, the legitimacy of any 
government emanates from a combination of these sources. 

The legitimacy of the CPSU, too, derived from various sources. 
The party has managed to recruit a significant percentage of 



288 



The Communist Party 

members having occupations carrying high status in Soviet soci- 
ety. In addition, the party has served as a vehicle of upward mo- 
bility for a significant share of the citizenry. By joining the party, 
members of the working class could ensure a secure future for them- 
selves in the political apparatus and access for their children to a 
good education and high-status jobs. The party also justified its 
right to rule by claiming to embody the ' 'science" of Marxism- 
Leninism and by its efforts to lead society to full communism. In 
addition, the CPSU appealed to the patriotism of the citizenry. 
In the more than seventy years of the party's rule, the Soviet Union 
has emerged as a superpower, and this international status is a 
source of pride for the Soviet people. Finally, tradition bolstered 
the legitimacy of the CPSU. The party located its roots in Rus- 
sian history, and it has incorporated aspects of Russian tradition 
into its political style. 

The CPSU is an elite body. In 1989 it comprised about 9.7 per- 
cent of the adult population of the Soviet Union. Among the 
"movers and shakers" of society, however, the percentage of party 
members was much higher. In the 1980s, approximately 27 per- 
cent of all citizens over thirty years of age and with at least ten 
years of education were members of the party. About 44 percent 
of all males over thirty with at least ten years of education belonged 
to the CPSU. Hence, in the words of American Soviet specialist 
Seweryn Bialer, males over thirty with at least an elementary edu- 
cation formed a "strong, politicized, and involved stratum which 
provides a buttress of the system's legitimacy within society." 

Among certain occupations, party saturation (the percentage of 
party members among a given group of citizens) was even higher. 
In 1989 some occupations were restricted to party members. These 
positions included officers of youth organizations, senior military 
officers, and officials of government bodies such as the ministries, 
state committees, and administrative departments. Occupations 
with saturation rates ranging from 20 to 50 percent included posi- 
tions as mid-level economic managers, scholars and academics, and 
hospital directors. Low saturation existed among jobs that carried 
low status and little prestige, such as industrial laborers, collective 
farmers, and teachers. Thus, the party could represent itself as a 
legitimate governing body because it commanded the talents of the 
most talented and ambitious citizens in society. 

The CPSU derived some legitimacy from the fact that it acted 
as a vehicle for upward mobility in society. People who have en- 
tered the party apparatus since the 1930s have come from a working- 
class background. The party widely publicized the working-class 
origins of its membership, which led members of that class to believe 



289 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

they could enter the elite and be successful within it (see Social Com- 
position of the Party, this ch.). 

Another source of party legitimacy lay in Marxist-Leninist ideol- 
ogy, which both promises an absolute good — communism — as the 
goal of history and shrouds its understanding of the means to that 
goal with the aura of science. The party justified its rule as leading 
to the creation of a full communist society. Hence, the CPSU 
claimed that the purpose of its rule was the common good and not 
the enrichment of the rulers. The party also identified Marxism- 
Leninism and the policies that it developed on the basis of this ideol- 
ogy with the absolute truth of science. The CPSU maintained that 
the laws of this science hold with the same rigor in society as the 
laws of physics or chemistry in nature. In part, the party justified 
its rule by claiming that it alone could understand this science of 
society. 

Soviet society has not reached full communism, and so the party 
has altered its ideology to ensure its continued legitimacy despite 
the inability to fulfill the promises contained in Marxism- Leninism. 
One modification has been the rejection of some of Marxism- 
Leninism's original ideological tenets. For example, in the early 
1930s the party renounced an egalitarian wage structure. A second 
modification has been the indefinite postponement of goals that 
cannot be realized. Thus, the party continued to assure the populace 
that the achievement of economic abundance or the completion 
of proletarian revolutions in developed Western countries would 
take place, but it did not specify a date. A third modification has 
been the ritualization of some of the goals whose fulfillment the 
party has postponed. American scholar Barrington Moore has 
written that on party holidays CPSU leaders reaffirmed various 
ideals that no longer served as guides for policy. For example, in 
his first public address as general secretary in 1984, Konstantin U. 
Chernenko averred that concern for the development of the new 
Soviet man remained an essential part of the CPSU's program. 
In the late 1980s, few accorded that goal much practical import, 
but the reaffirmation of that objective probably reassured the party 
faithful that the new leadership would remain true to the CPSU's 
ideology and traditions. 

The party attempted to strengthen its legitimacy with appeals 
to the pride Soviet citizens feel for their country. The party has 
led Soviet Russia from the devastation the country suffered in 
the Bolshevik Revolution and Civil War (1918-21) to victory in 
World War II over an ancient Russian enemy and then to 
superpower status. In 1989, moreover, the CPSU could still claim 
to lead a world communist movement (see Communist Parties 



290 



The Communist Party 



Abroad, ch. 10). Since World War II, Soviet influence has extended 
to Asia, Africa, and Latin America. A feeling of patriotic pride 
for these accomplishments united the Soviet elite, and it bound the 
elite to the masses. 

The CPSU has incorporated aspects of traditional Russian cul- 
ture into its political style. The party drew upon Russia's revolu- 
tionary tradition and represented itself as the culmination of a 
progressive and revolutionary movement that began with the "De- 
cembrists' revolt" of 1825 (see War and Peace, 1796-1825, ch. 1). 
Most aspects of this revolutionary tradition centered on Lenin. The 
fact that the state preserved his remains in a mausoleum on Red 
Square echoed an old Russian Orthodox belief that the bodies of 
saints do not decay. In addition, the regime bestowed Lenin's name 
on the second largest city of the Soviet Union, a bust or picture 
of Lenin decorated all party offices, and quotations from his writ- 
ings appeared on billboards throughout the country. All Soviet lead- 
ers since Lenin have tried to show that they follow Lenin's policies. 
The CPSU has sought to maintain and strengthen its legitimacy 
by drawing upon the legacy of this charismatic figure. 

Another element of old Russian culture that has entered the 
CPSU's political style was the cult of the leader (also referred to 
as cult of personality — see Glossary). The Soviet cult of the leader 
appropriated a cultural form whose sources lay deep in the Rus- 
sian past. Cults of saints, heroes, and the just tsar had long existed 
in Russia. In the 1920s, the cult of Lenin emerged as part of a 
deliberate policy to gain popular support for the regime. Joseph V. 
Stalin, who built the most extensive cult of the leader, was reported 
to have declared that the "Russian people is a tsarist people. It 
needs a tsar." Stalin assumed the title of generalissimo during 
World War II, and throughout his rule he was referred to by the 
title vozhd' (leader). Other titles appropriated by Stalin included 
Leader of the World Proletariat, Great Helmsman, Father of the 
Peoples, and Genius of Mankind. 

Soviet leaders since Stalin have also encouraged the development 
of their own cults, although on a smaller scale than that of Stalin. 
These cults of the party leaders replicated that of the just tsar. Like 
the cult of the just tsar, who was depicted as having remained true 
to his faith of Russian Orthodoxy, the cults of party leaders such 
as Khrushchev and Leonid I. Brezhnev represented them as leaders 
who remained true to their faith in Marxism-Leninism. Like the 
just tsar, who was depicted as being close to the common people, 
these leaders represented themselves as having the interests of the 
common people at heart. 



291 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Central Party Institutions 

In a political organization like the CPSU, which aims to be 
monolithic and centralized, central party institutions assume 
supreme importance. Central institutions in the CPSU included 
the party congress, the Central Committee, the Central Auditing 
Commission, the Party Control Committee, the Politburo (politi- 
cal bureau), the Secretariat, and the commissions. These organs 
made binding decisions for intermediate and local party bodies down 
to the PPO (see fig. 12). 

According to the Party Rules, the party congress was the highest 
authority in the party. This body was too large and unwieldy to 
exert any influence, however, and its members were appointed 
either directly or indirectly by those whom it ostensibly elected to 
the Central Committee and Politburo. Moreover, the party con- 
gress met only once every five years. Another large party body of 
note was the party conference, which met infrequently upon the 
decision of the Central Committee. The Central Committee itself, 
which met every six months, theoretically ruled the party between 
congresses. Although more influential than the party congress and 
the party conference, the Central Committee wielded less power 
than the Politburo, Secretariat, and the party commissions. 

The Politburo, the Secretariat, and the party commissions 
paralleled a set of central governmental institutions that included 
the Council of Ministers and the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet 
(see Central Government, ch. 8). The distinction between party 
and government institutions lay in the difference between policy 
formation and policy implementation. Stated briefly, the central 
party institutions made policy, and the government carried it out. 
The distinction between policy formation and policy implementa- 
tion was often a narrow one, however, and party leaders frequently 
involved themselves in carrying out policies in the economic, domes- 
tic political, and foreign policy spheres. This problem, known in 
the Soviet Union as podmena (substitution), occurred throughout 
all party and government hierarchies (see Intermediate-Level Party 
Organizations, this ch.). 

The distinction between policy formation and policy execution 
also characterized the differences between the Politburo, on the one 
hand, and the Secretariat and the commissions, on the other hand. 
The Politburo made policy for the party (as well as for the Soviet 
Union as a whole). The Secretariat and, apparently, the party com- 
missions produced policy alternatives for the Politburo and, once 
the latter body made a decision, carried out the Politburo's 
directives. In fulfilling these roles, of course, the Secretariat often 



292 



The Communist Party 



made policy decisions itself. The Secretariat and the commissions 
administered a party bureaucracy that numbered in the hundreds 
of thousands. Through this apparatus, the CPSU Secretariat and 
the party commissions radiated their influence throughout the mid- 
dle and lower levels of the party and thereby throughout the govern- 
ment, economy, and society. 

The general secretary, as a member of the Politburo and the 
leader of the Secretariat, was the most powerful official in the CPSU. 
The general secretary was the chief policymaker, enjoyed the 
greatest amount of authority in party appointments, and represented 
the Soviet Union in its dealings with other states. The absence of 
a set term of office and the general secretary's lack of statutory duties 
meant that candidates for this position had to compete for power 
and authority to attain it. Once having been elected to this posi- 
tion, the general secretary had to maintain and increase his power 
and authority in order to implement his program. 

Party Congress 

According to the Party Rules, the party congress was "the supreme 
organ" of the CPSU. The First Party Congress took place in 1898 
in Minsk, with 9 delegates out of a party membership of about 
1,000. In 1986 the Twenty- Seventh Party Congress had 5,000 
delegates, or 1 for every 3,670 party members. Delegates were for- 
mally elected by republic party congresses or, in the case of the 
Russian Republic, by conferences of kraia (see Glossary), oblasts 
(see Glossary), and autonomous republics (see Glossary). Atten- 
dance at a party congress was largely honorific. Approximately half 
the delegates were luminaries in the party. The Twenty- Seventh 
Party Congress included 1,074 important party functionaries, 1,240 
executive government officials, 147 distinguished scholars and scien- 
tists, 332 high-ranking military officers, and 279 writers and artists. 
The party reserved the remainder of delegate positions for rank- 
and-file party members. For the rank and file, attendance at a party 
congress was a reward for long years of service and loyalty. 

Relative to other central party institutions, the size of the party 
congress was inversely proportional to its importance. Lack of de- 
bate and deliberation have been characteristic of party congresses 
since the Tenth Party Congress in 1921 (see Democratic Central- 
ism, this ch.). Party congresses convened every year until 1925. 
Thereafter, they began to lose their importance as an authorita- 
tive party organ, and the intervals between congresses increased 
to three or four years. From 1939 to 1952, the party neglected to 
hold a congress. After Stalin's death in 1953, the party elite de- 
cided to convene congresses more frequently. Since the mid-1950s, 



293 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 




294 



The Communist Party 



the Party Rules have stipulated that congresses be held every five 
years. 

Since 1925, however, some notable congresses have taken place. 
The Seventeenth Party Congress in 1934 praised collectivization 
and the successes of the First Five-Year Plan (1928-32), and it con- 
firmed Stalin as head of the party and the country. In 1956, at 
the Twentieth Party Congress, Khrushchev criticized Stalin's cult 
of personality (see The Khrushchev Era, ch. 2). In 1986, at the 
Twenty-Seventh Party Congress, General Secretary Mikhail S. 
Gorbachev attempted to break with Stalin's legacy by enunciat- 
ing policies calling for more openness (glasnost' — see Glossary) in 
Soviet life and for restructuring (perestroika — see Glossary). 

The party congress normally met for about a week. The most 
important event occurred when the general secretary delivered the 
political report on the state of the party, reviewed Soviet economic 
and foreign policy over the preceding five years, cited achievements 
and problems of the world communist movement, and delivered 
a prospectus for the next five years. In another important speech, 
the chairman of the Council of Ministers presented the targets for 
the next five-year plan. These two speeches provided the setting 
for a number of shorter speeches that followed. Republic party secre- 
taries, oblast committee (oblast' komitet — obkom) secretaries, and 
government officials offered very formalized comment on the poli- 
cies enunciated by the general secretary. The central apparatus also 
selected a few rank-and-file members to give speeches praising party 
policies. Finally, the congress listened to brief reports given by secre- 
taries of foreign communist and workers' parties friendly to 
Moscow. Some party congresses adopted a broad statement called 
the party program (see Glossary). 

While in session, the party congress voted on several kinds of 
issues. All decisions were unanimous. The congress enacted a ser- 
ies of resolutions that stemmed from the general secretary's politi- 
cal report, and those resolutions became party policy until the next 
congress. In addition, the party leadership could offer changes in 
the Party Rules to the congress. Most important, the party congress 
formally elected the members of the Central Committee, which it 
charged to govern the party until the next congress. 

Party Conference 

Similar in size to the congress was the party conference, although 
unlike the congress it did not meet regularly. The Nineteenth Party 
Conference — the most recent — took place in 1988. (The Eighteenth 
Party Conference had been convened in 1941 .) Officially, the con- 
ference ranked third in importance among party meetings, after 



295 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

the congress and the Central Committee plenum. Oblast and dis- 
trict party leaders handpicked most of the delegates to the 
Nineteenth Party Conference, as they had for party congresses in 
the past, despite Gorbachev's desire that supporters of reform serve 
as delegates. Nevertheless, public opinion managed in some in- 
stances to pressure the party apparatus into selecting delegates who 
pressed for reform. 

The Nineteenth Party Conference made no personnel changes 
in the Central Committee, as some Western observers had expected. 
However, the conference passed a series of resolutions signaling 
policy departures in a number of areas. For example, the resolu- 
tion "On the Democratization of Soviet Society and the Reform 
of the Political System" called for the creation of a new, powerful 
position of chairman of the Supreme Soviet, limited party office- 
holders to two five-year terms, and prescribed multicandidate elec- 
tions to a new Congress of People's Deputies (see Congress of 
People's Deputies, ch. 8). The conference passed other resolutions 
on such topics as legal reform, interethnic relations, economic re- 
form, glasnost\ and bureaucracy. 

By convening the Nineteenth Party Conference approximately 
two years after initiating his reform program, Gorbachev hoped 
to further the democratization of the party, to withdraw the party 
from many aspects of economic management, and to reinvigorate 
government and state institutions. He also sought to rouse the party 
rank and file against the bureaucracy. In this vein, the conference 
was a success for Gorbachev because it reaffirmed his program of 
party-directed change from above. 

Central Committee 

The Central Committee met at least once every six months in 
plenary session. Between party congresses, the Party Rules required 
that the Central Committee "direct all the activities of the party 
and the local party organs, carry out the recruitment and the as- 
signment of leading cadres, direct the work of the central govern- 
mental and social organizations of the workers, create various 
organs, institutions, and enterprises of the party and supervise their 
activities, name the editorial staff of central newspapers and jour- 
nals working under its auspices, disburse funds of the party bud- 
get and verify their accounting." In fact, the Central Committee, 
which in 1989 numbered more than 300 members, was too large 
and cumbersome to perform these duties; therefore, it delegated 
its authority in these matters to the Politburo and Secretariat. 

The history of the Central Committee dates to 1898, when the 
First Party Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party 



296 



The Communist Party 



elected a three-person body to run its affairs. In May 1989, the 
Central Committee had 251 full members and 109 candidate mem- 
bers. (Candidate members do not have the right to vote.) 

Western scholars know little about the selection processes for 
membership on the Central Committee. British Sovietologists 
Ronald J. Hill and Peter Frank have suggested that the party leader- 
ship drew up a list of candidates before the party congress. Party 
leaders then discussed the list and presented it to the congress for 
ratification. Both personal merit and institutional affiliation deter- 
mined selection, with the majority of members selected because 
of the positions they held. Such positions included republic party 
first and second secretaries; obkom secretaries; chairmen of repub- 
lic, provincial, and large urban governmental bodies; military lead- 
ers; important writers and artists; and academics. 

During periods of policy change, turnover in the Central Com- 
mittee occurred at a rapid rate. A new leadership, seeking to carry 
out new policies, attempted to replace officials who might attempt 
to block reform efforts with its own supporters. Thus, at the Twenty- 
Seventh Party Congress, the first for Gorbachev as general secre- 
tary, the rate of turnover for full members was 41 percent, as com- 
pared with 25 percent at the Twenty-Sixth Party Congress in 1981 . 
In addition, of the 170 candidate members elected by the Twenty- 
Seventh Party Congress, 116 (or 68 percent) were new. 

Gorbachev effected further changes at the April 25, 1989, Cen- 
tral Committee plenum. As a result of personnel turnover because 
of death, retirement, or loss of position since the Twenty- Seventh 
Party Congress, a significant percentage of the Central Commit- 
tee had come to be classified as ''dead souls," that is, people who 
no longer occupied the position that had originally gained them 
either full or candidate status in the Central Committee. At the 
April 25 plenum, seventy-four full members resigned their Cen- 
tral Committee positions. Twenty-four members received promo- 
tion to full-member status. (The Party Rules dictate that only the 
party congress can name new candidate members and that a ple- 
num can only promote new full members from among the pool 
of candidate members.) 

The changes signified a reduction of influence for both the party 
apparatus and the military. Party apparatchiks (see Glossary) 
declined from 44.5 percent to 33.9 percent of the full members. 
The military's representation fell from 8.5 percent to 4.4 percent 
among the full members. 

Worker and peasant representation rose from 8.5 percent to 14.3 
percent. But because members of these groups lacked an indepen- 
dent political base, they usually supported the general secretary. 



297 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Thus, the changes indicated a victory for Gorbachev. He elimi- 
nated many Central Committee members who lost power under 
his rule and were therefore considered opponents of reform. 
Gorbachev also increased the number of his own supporters in the 
Central Committee. 

The Central Committee served significant functions for the party. 
The committee brought together the leaders of the most impor- 
tant institutions in Soviet society, individuals who had the same 
rank in the institutional-territorial hierarchy. The Central Com- 
mittee thus provided a setting for these organizational and territorial 
interests to communicate with one another, articulate their con- 
cerns, and reconcile their positions on various issues. Membership 
in the Central Committee defined the political elite and reinforced 
their high status. This status lent the committee members the 
authority necessary to carry out policies in their respective institu- 
tions. Members also possessed a great deal of expertise in their 
respective fields and could be consulted by the Central Commit- 
tee apparatus in preparing policy recommendations and resolutions 
for plenums, party conferences, and party congresses. 

Central Auditing Commission 

Every party congress elected a Central Auditing Commission, 
which reviewed the party's financial accounts and the financial 
activities of its institutions. The commission also investigated the 
treatment accorded to letters and complaints by the party's cen- 
tral institutions. The status of membership on the Central Audit- 
ing Commission appeared to fall just below that of candidate status 
on the Central Committee. In 1989 the commission had seventy 
members. The commission elected a bureau, which in May 1989 
was headed by Deputy Chairman Alia A. Nizovtseva. 

Party Control Committee 

The Party Control Committee, which was attached to the Cen- 
tral Committee, investigated violations of party discipline and 
administered expulsions from the party. Because it examined the 
work of party members in responsible economic posts, this com- 
mittee could involve itself in financial and economic management. 
The Party Control Committee also could redress grievances of party 
members who had been expelled by their PPO. In 1989 its chair- 
man was Boris K. Pugo. 

Politburo 

Two weeks before the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the Bolshe- 
vik leadership formed the Politburo as a means to further centralize 



298 



The Communist Party 



decision making and to permit effective adaptation of party poli- 
cies to rapidly changing circumstances. Since the Bolshevik Revo- 
lution, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU has 
consisted of the highest party and government officials in the Soviet 
Union. Despite the importance of this body, only a small amount 
of space was devoted to it in the Party Rules, which noted only that 
the Central Committee chose the Politburo for "leadership of the 
work of the party between plenums of the Central Committee." 
The Politburo formed the highest decision-making body in the 
Soviet Union. Its full and candidate members served on the Polit- 
buro by virtue of their party or government positions. 

The Politburo was a standing subcommittee of the Central Com- 
mittee. Like the Central Committee, the Politburo was composed 
of full and candidate (nonvoting) members. The Party Rules neither 
specified the size of the Politburo nor mentioned candidate status. 

Four general career patterns determined accession to member- 
ship in the Politburo. Officials of the central party apparatus could 
rise within that hierarchy to acquire a position that led to a seat 
on the Secretariat. In 1989 several secretaries of the Central Com- 
mittee sat on the Politburo. Other officials, such as Mikhail A. 
Suslov (the party's leading ideologist under Brezhnev) and 
Aleksandr N. Iakovlev, who also made his career in ideology, at- 
tained membership in the Politburo because of their expertise. The 
technical or economic specialist was a third pattern. For example, 
Nikolai Sliun'kov probably was brought into the Politburo because 
of his expertise in economic administration. Finally, a successful 
career in the provinces often led to a call to Moscow and a career 
in the central apparatus. Volodymyr Shcherbyts'kyy exemplified 
this career pattern. 

Several interlocking trends have characterized the Politburo since 
Stalin's death in 1953. Membership in the Politburo has become 
increasingly representative of important functional and territorial 
interests. Before 1953 the party leadership concentrated on build- 
ing the economic, social, and political bases for a socialist society. 
In the post-Stalin period the leadership has sought instead to manage 
society and contain social change. Management of society required 
a division of labor within the Politburo and the admission of peo- 
ple with specialized expertise. Stalin kept the lines of responsibil- 
ity ambiguous, and he tightly controlled the kinds of information 
his comrades on the Politburo received. Since 1953 Politburo mem- 
bers have had greater access to information and hence more op- 
portunity to develop consistent policy positions. Because the party 
leadership eliminated violence as an instrument of elite politics and 
restrained the secret police after Stalin's death, Politburo members 



299 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

began advancing policy positions without fear of losing their seats 
on this body, or even their lives, if they found themselves on the 
wrong side of the policy debate. 

Secretariat 

Until September 1988, the Secretariat headed the CPSU's cen- 
tral apparatus and was solely responsible for the development and 
implementation of party policies. The Secretariat also carried po- 
litical weight because many of its members sat on the Politburo 
(see fig. 13). In 1989 eight members of the Secretariat, including 
the general secretary of the Secretariat of the Central Committee 
of the CPSU, served as full members of the Politburo. One member, 
Georgii P. Razumovskii, was a candidate member of the Politburo. 
Those officials who sat on the Politburo, served in the Secretariat, 
and chaired a party commission were the most powerful in the 
Soviet Union. 

After the formation of the party commissions in the fall of 1988, 
lines of authority over the central party bureaucracy became very 
unclear because the responsibilities of the secretaries and the respon- 
sibilities of the commissions considerably overlapped. Of the nine 
secretaries, excluding the general secretary, six chaired party com- 
missions. One Western observer, Alexander Rahr, believed that 
this factor limited the power of the Secretariat because the influence 
of the secretaries who chaired the commissions was restricted to 
specific areas of competence as defined by their commission chair- 
manships. In addition, the secretaries became answerable to the 
commissions they chaired. Finally, in one case, a secretary served 
as a subordinate to another secretary in the latter' s role as the chair- 
man of a commission. Viktor P. Nikonov, a secretary responsible 
for agriculture, was deputy chairman of the Agrarian Policy Com- 
mission, which was chaired by Egor K. Ligachev, another party 
secretary. 

Western specialists poorly understood lines of authority in the 
Secretariat. It was clear that the members of the Secretariat super- 
vised the work of the Central Committee departments. Department 
chiefs, who normally sat on the Central Committee, were sub- 
ordinate to the secretaries. For example, in 1989 Aleksandr S. 
Kapto, the chairman of the Ideological Department, answered to 
Vadim A. Medvedev, party secretary for ideology, and Valentin A. 
Falin, the head of the International Department, answered to 
Iakovlev, party secretary for international policy. Most department 
heads were assisted by a first deputy head (a first deputy adminis- 
trator in the case of the Administration of Affairs Department) and 
from one to six deputy heads (deputy administrators in the case 



300 



The Communist Party 



of the Administration of Affairs Department). However, the Inter- 
national Department had two deputy heads. 

In 1989 a variety of departments made up the CPSU's central 
apparatus. Some departments were worthy of note. The Party 
Building and Cadre Work Department assigned party personnel 
in the nomenklatura system (see Nomenklatura, this ch.). The State 
and Legal Department supervised the armed forces, the Commit- 
tee for State Security (Komitet gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti — 
KGB), the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the trade unions, and the 
Procuracy. 

Before 1989 the apparatus contained many more departments 
responsible for the economy. These departments included one for 
the economy as a whole, one for machine building, and one for 
the chemical industry, among others. The party abolished these 
departments in an effort to remove itself from the day-to-day 
management of the economy in favor of government bodies and 
a greater role for the market. In early 1989, Gorbachev suggested 
that the agrarian and defense industry departments might be dis- 
banded as well as part of his ongoing reform efforts. 

Commissions 

At the September 30, 1988, plenum of the Central Committee, 
the CPSU announced that six new commissions would be formed 
to develop policy and oversee its implementation in a series of key 
areas. A resolution of the November 1988 plenum that actually 
established the commissions maintained that their purpose was to 
' ' facilitate the involvement of Central Committee members and 
candidate members in active work on major directions of domes- 
tic and foreign policy." 

Several factors led to the formation of these new party bodies. 
First, Gorbachev probably sought to strengthen reformist influence 
at the top of the party hierarchy. Second, the move was designed 
to reduce the party's day-to-day involvement in the economy. Thus, 
only one of the six commissions was concerned with economic pol- 
icy, while another dealt with agriculture. Finally, Gorbachev's desire 
to reduce the power of his conservative rival, Ligachev, also helped 
to explain the move. Prior to September 1988, Ligachev had been 
the party's second secretary, the official who usually chaired meet- 
ings of the Secretariat. By limiting the influence of the Secretariat 
and by placing Ligachev in charge of agriculture — the Achilles heel 
of the economy — Gorbachev eliminated Ligachev as a competitor 
for power. 

As of May 1989, the actual work of the commissions belied the 
significance the party attached to them. In their first six months, 



301 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



POLITBURO 

■ | 


] 




1 

1 ' 

AGRARIAN POLICY 




1 

. SECRETARIAT 

n ' 

DEPARTMENTS 






IDEOLOGICAL 




- 


ADMINISTRATION 
OF AFFAIRS 






INTERNATIONAL POLICY 




- 


AGRARIAN 










- 








LEGAL POLICY 




DEFENSE INDUSTRY 




PARTY BUILDING AND 
CADRE POLICY 




GENERAL 
















IDEOLOGICAL 




SOCIOECONOMIC POLICY 












INTERNATIONAL 

PARTY BUILDING AND 
CADRE WORK 






SOCIOECONOMIC 
STATE AND LEGAL 





Figure 13. Central Apparatus of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 
1988 



none of the commissions had met more than once. All the com- 
muniques reporting on their meetings have been devoid of sub- 
stance. 

General Secretary: Power and Authority 

That certain policies throughout Soviet history have been so 
clearly identified with the general secretary of the CPSU demon- 
strated the importance of that position as well as of the stakes in 



302 



The Communist Party 



the succession struggle upon a general secretary's death or removal 
from office. As general secretary, Stalin determined the party's poli- 
cies in the economy and foreign affairs and thus gave his name 
to a whole era in Soviet history. Khrushchev put his stamp on a 
variety of policies, including peaceful coexistence with the West 
and the virgin land campaign (see Khrushchev's Reforms and Fall, 
ch. 2). Soviet and Western observers identified Brezhnev with 
detente and the Soviet military buildup (see The Brezhnev Era, 
ch. 2). In the late 1980s, Gorbachev associated his name with the 
policies of openness, restructuring, and democratization. 

The general secretary possessed many powers. As chairman of 
the Politburo, the general secretary decided the agenda and tim- 
ing of its deliberations. The general secretary acted as chief execu- 
tive of the party apparatus and thus supervised the nomenklatura. 
The general secretary also chaired the Defense Council, which 
managed the Soviet military-industrial complex (see Defense Coun- 
cil, ch. 18). Finally, through attendance at summit meetings with 
world heads of state, the general secretary acquired symbolic legiti- 
mation as the Soviet Union's top ruler. 

Once selected for this position by other members of the Polit- 
buro and confirmed by the Central Committee, the general secre- 
tary had to proceed to build a base of power and strengthen his 
authority. Officials considered eligible for the position of general 
secretary held a great amount of power to begin with; they always 
occupied seats on the Politburo and Secretariat, and they devel- 
oped a large number of clients throughout the party and govern- 
ment bureaucracies. The general secretary's efforts to extend this 
power base involved placing loyal clients in strategic positions 
throughout party and government hierarchies. One measure of the 
success of the general secretary's efforts in this regard was turnover 
in the Central Committee at the first party congress following the 
secretary's accession to the position (see Central Committee, this 
ch.). The general secretary used these clients to promote desired 
policies at all levels of the party and government bureaucracies and 
to ensure accurate transmission of information about policy prob- 
lems up the hierarchy (see Nomenklatura, this ch.). 

To secure his rule and advance his policies, the general secre- 
tary also had to increase his authority. American Sovietologist 
George Breslauer has written that efforts to build authority involved 
legitimation of the general secretary's policies and programs and 
demonstration of his competence or indispensability as a leader. 
The general secretary strove to show that his policies derived from 
Lenin's teachings and that these policies have led to successes in 
socialist construction. Moreover, the general secretary strove to 



303 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

demonstrate a unique insight into the teachings of Marx and Lenin 
and into the current stage of world development. The general secre- 
tary also emphasized personal ties to the people and a leadership 
motivated by the interests of the workers and peasants (see Party 
Legitimacy, this ch.). One further means to strengthen the legiti- 
macy of the general secretary's power has been the acquisition of 
high government offices. Thus in October 1988, Gorbachev be- 
came chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, which was 
the titular head of the Soviet state. He retained his position as head 
of state when in May 1989 the newly elected Congress of People's 
Deputies chose a new Supreme Soviet and elected Gorbachev to 
the just created position of chairman of the Supreme Soviet. In 
the past, the head of the Soviet state sometimes had been referred 
to as ' 'president" in Soviet and Western media, although such a 
position was not identified in the Constitution. 

Another means that Soviet general secretaries have used to en- 
sure their authority is the cult of the leader. The cult of the leader 
has several intended audiences. For example, the general secre- 
tary used the cult of the leader to intimidate actual or potential 
rivals and thus force them to accept and follow his policies. In ad- 
dition, the cult of the leader reassured those members of the party 
and government hierarchies whose careers depended upon the suc- 
cess of the general secretary's policies. The cult of the leader pro- 
vided inspiration to those who wished to identify with a patriarchal 
figure. 

Breslauer has written that Soviet general secretaries since Sta- 
lin have attempted to build their authority by creating a sense of 
national elan. For example, Iurii V. Andropov, general secretary 
from November 1982 to February 1984, sought to rouse Soviet 
society with his campaign against alcoholism and corruption. The 
general secretary has also sought to play the role of problem solver. 
For example, in the mid- and late 1980s, Gorbachev sought to 
reverse a decline in economic efficiency by promoting economic 
policies designed to curb the ministries' role in Soviet economic 
life and thereby encourage enterprise initiative (see Reforming the 
Planning System, ch. 11). 

Since the death of Lenin, the party elite has been unable to in- 
stitute regulations governing the transfer of office from one gen- 
eral secretary to the next. The Nineteenth Party Conference called 
for limiting party officeholders to two five-year terms. However, 
it was unclear whether this proviso would apply to the general secre- 
tary and other top leaders. The party leadership has yet to devise 
procedures by which the general secretary may relinquish the office. 
The powers of the office were not set; neither were its rights and 



304 



The Communist Party 



duties. These factors combined to generate a high degree of un- 
predictability in selecting a new leader and a period of uncertainty 
while the new general secretary consolidates power. 

Three stages have characterized the efforts of various general 
secretaries to consolidate their power and authority. The first stage 
begins while the incumbent leader is in power and lasts through 
his death or ouster. Potential successors seek to place themselves 
in more powerful positions relative to their rivals. For example, 
under Konstantin U. Chernenko (general secretary from Febru- 
ary 1984 to March 1985) Gorbachev chaired Politburo meetings 
in the general secretary's absence and also assumed responsibili- 
ties for cadre policy. These responsibilities enabled Gorbachev to 
set the agenda for Politburo meetings and to place persons loyal 
to him in important positions throughout the regime. Gorbachev's 
unsuccessful rivals for power, Grigorii V. Romanov and Viktor V. 
Grishin, had fewer such opportunities to influence the outcome of 
the struggle to succeed Chernenko. 

The second stage occurs with the transfer of authority to the new 
leader and both the accumulation of positions and the authority 
that goes with them. This stage can occur over a prolonged period 
of time and coincide with the next stage. For example, only in 1977 
did Brezhnev, named general secretary in 1964, become chairman 
of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet and thus de facto head of 
state. The third stage involves two steps: consolidation of the new 
leader's power through the removal of his predecessor's clients and 
those of his actual and potential rivals for power; and the installa- 
tion of the new leader's clients in key positions. This stage proba- 
bly lasts for the duration of the general secretary's tenure. 

A succession struggle entails opportunities and problems for the 
new party leader and for the Soviet leadership as a whole. Trans- 
fer of office from one general secretary to another can improve the 
possibilities for change. Seweryn Bialer has written that "ambi- 
tion, power, and the desire for innovation all meet in a succession 
struggle and so prepare the ground for change." Succession dis- 
rupts the normal pattern of business. Also, policy initiatives are 
a critical means of consolidating a new leader's position. Khru- 
shchev's condemnation of Stalin represented an appeal to party 
officials dissatisfied with Stalinism and an effort to define and control 
a new program that would better meet the needs of the party and 
society. Similarly, in the late 1980s Gorbachev's initiatives appealed 
to officials and citizens who were dissatisfied with the inertia of 
the late Brezhnev period and who sought to modernize the Soviet 
economy. 



305 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Yet, a succession struggle can also occasion serious difficulties 
for the leadership. A succession struggle increases the probability 
for personal and policy conflicts. In turn, these conflicts can lead 
to political passivity as the rivals for power turn their attention to 
that struggle rather than to policy development and execution. 
When the general secretary lacks the influence necessary to pro- 
mote desired policies, a sense of inertia can debilitate the political 
system at the intermediate and lower levels. This factor partially 
explains the resistance that Khrushchev and, in the late 1980s, 
Gorbachev met in their respective efforts to alter the policies of 
their predecessors. 

Intermediate-Level Party Organizations 

The intermediate-level party structure embraced the republic, 
oblast, raion (see Glossary), and city levels of the hierarchy. The 
organizational scheme of each of these levels resembled the others. 
In addition, at each of these levels the party organization cor- 
responded to a similar layer in the government administration. 
According to the Party Rules, the authoritative body at each of these 
levels was the congress (republic level) or conference. These bod- 
ies elected a committee that, in turn, chose a bureau with several 
members (including a first secretary) and a secretariat. Conferences 
at one level elected delegates to the conference or congress at the 
next highest level. Thus, the rural or city conference designated 
delegates to the oblast conference or, in the case of the smaller 
republics, directly to the republic party congress. The oblast con- 
ference elected delegates to congresses of the larger republics. In 
May 1989, the Russian Republic had no party congress. Delegates 
from provinces (oblasts, kraia, and autonomous subdivisions) in 
that republic were elected directly to the all-union party congress. 
Of course, at each level of the hierarchy the term election generally 
was a euphemism. By the norms of democratic centralism, party 
leaders at each level approved the makeup of the party conference 
or congress that ostensibly elected them, as well as the composi- 
tion of party bodies on the next lowest level. 

Republic Party Organization 

The republic party organization replicated the party structure 
on the all-union level except for the Russian Republic, which had 
no republic-level party organization in 1989. A congress, made up 
of delegates from the oblast or district and town organizations, 
elected a central committee to govern the republic in the five-year 
interval between party congresses. The central committee of the 
republic, which held a plenum once every four months, named a 



306 



The Communist Party 



bureau (in the case of the Ukrainian Republic, this body was called 
a politburo) and a secretariat to run the affairs of the republic be- 
tween plenums of the central committee. 

Full and candidate (nonvoting) members of republic bureaus in- 
cluded officials who held seats on this body by virtue of their party 
or government positions. Party officials who sat on the republic 
party bureaus normally included the first secretary of the republic 
and the second secretary for party-organizational work, as well as 
others selected from among the following: the first secretary of the 
party organization in the capital city of the republic, the chairman 
of the republic party control committee, and the first secretary of 
an outlying city or province. Government officials who could serve 
on the republic bureau were elected from among the following: the 
chairman of the republic's council of ministers, the chairman of 
the presidium of the republic's supreme soviet, the first deputy 
chairman of the republic's council of ministers, the republic's KGB 
chairman, and the troop commander of the Soviet armed forces 
stationed in the republic. 

In 1989 the secretariats of the fourteen republic party organiza- 
tions included a second secretary for party-organizational work and 
a secretary for ideology. The number of departments has, however, 
shrunk as the party has attempted to limit its role in economic 
management. Some sources also indicated the formation of com- 
missions similar to those of the central party apparatus. Thus, the 
republic first secretaries in the Kazakh, Latvian, Lithuanian, and 
Moldavian republics and the second secretaries in the Belorussian 
and Turkmen republics assumed the chairmanships of their repub- 
lics' commissions on state and legal policy. 

With the exception of the Kazakh Republic (where a Russian, 
Gennadii Kolbin, served as first secretary), the first secretaries of 
the republic party organizations in 1989 were all members of their 
republic's dominant nationality. However, in 1989 the officials 
responsible for party-organizational work — the second secretaries — 
were predominandy Russians. (The Kazakh party's second secre- 
tary was Sergei M. Titarenko, a Ukrainian; the second secretary 
in the Ukrainian Republic was a Ukrainian.) The second secre- 
tary supervised cadre policy in the republic and hence managed 
the republic's nomenklatura appointments. As an official whose 
primary loyalty was to Moscow, the second secretary acted as a 
vehicle for the influence of the CPSU's central apparatus on the 
affairs of the republic's party organization and as a watchdog to 
ensure the republic organization's adherence to Moscow's de- 
mands. 



307 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Oblast-Level Organization 

Below the all-union organization in the Russian Republic (which 
sufficed for the Russian Republic's party organization in 1989) and 
the union republic party organizations in the Azerbaydzhan, 
Belorussian, Georgian, Kazakh, Kirgiz, Tadzhik, Turkmen, Ukrain- 
ian, and Uzbek republics stood the oblast party organization, 122 
of which existed in the Soviet Union in 1989. (Six large, thinly 
populated regions in the Russian Republic have been designated 
by the term krai; these regions are treated herein as oblasts.) The 
Armenian, Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, and Moldavian repub- 
lics had no oblasts. An oblast could embrace a large city or na- 
tionality unit. According to the Party Rules, the authoritative body 
in the province was the party conference, which met twice every 
five years and consisted of delegates elected by the district or city 
party conference. Between oblast party conferences, an oblast com- 
mittee {obkom) comprising full and candidate members selected by 
the conference supervised the provincial party organization and, 
through it, the province as a whole. The oblast party committee 
met once every four months. That committee chose a bureau made 
up of voting and nonvoting members and a secretariat. 

The bureau integrated officials from the most important sectors 
of the provincial party, economic, and governmental organizations 
into a unified political elite. Membership on the bureau enabled 
these officials to coordinate policies in their respective administra- 
tive spheres. 

American Sovietologist Joel C. Moses found that as of the 
mid-1980s five different kinds of specialists served on the obkom 
bureau. The first category, composed of agricultural specialists, 
could be selected from among the obkom agricultural secretary, the 
agricultural administration of the oblast, or the obkom first secre- 
tary in predominantly rural regions. A second category of bureau 
membership consisted of industrial specialists, who were drawn from 
among the obkom industry secretary, the first secretary of the provin- 
cial capital (where most provincial industries were located), the 
provincial trade union council chairman, the first secretary of a 
large industrialized city district, or the obkom first secretary. Ideol- 
ogy specialists made up the third category. They were selected from 
the obkom secretary for ideology, the editor of the provincial party 
newspaper, or the first secretary of the Komsomol (see Glos- 
sary). A fourth category was the cadres specialist, who supervised 
nomenklatura appointments in the province. The cadres specialist 
on the provincial party bureau normally occupied one of the 



308 



Monument in a Moscow 
park honoring Pavlik 
Morozov (1918-32). 
During collectivization 
the Soviet youth was 
murdered by local 
villagers for informing 
authorities about the illegal 
activities of his kulak 
relatives. 

Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 



following positions: obkom first secretary, head of the obkom party- 
organizational department, chairman of the provincial trade union 
council, or obkom cadres secretary. "Mixed generalists" made up 
the fifth category. These officials served on the obkom bureau to 
fulfill positions that required a broader background than those 
possessed by the functional specialists. A wide range of roles pre- 
pared the mixed generalists to carry out their tasks. Prior to serv- 
ing on the provincial party bureau, these officials generally worked 
in industry, agriculture, party administration, or ideology. 

Reform of the party's central apparatus, however, portended 
significant changes at the regional level. According to Georgii 
Kriuchkov, a senior official of the Central Committee, "the party 
is shedding the functions of dealing with day-to-day problems as 
they arise, because these problems are within the competence of 
the state, managerial, and public bodies." Hence, parts of the obkom 
bureau that paralleled government and managerial bodies — mainly 
in the area of economic management — were to be dismantled. 

The first secretary of the party obkom was the most powerful offi- 
cial in the province. Paradoxically, much of that power stemmed 
from Soviet economic inefficiency. According to the norms of 
democratic centralism, the obkom secretary had to carry out deci- 
sions made by leaders at the all-union and republic levels of the party 
hierarchy. Nevertheless, the obkom secretary preserved some scope 
for independent political initiative on issues of national importance. 



309 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Initiative, perseverance, and ruthlessness were necessary charac- 
teristics of the successful obkom secretary, who had to aggregate 
scarce resources to meet economic targets and lobby central plan- 
ners for low targets. Soviet emigre Alexander Yanov has argued 
that the interest of the obkom secretary, however, lay in preserving 
an inefficient provincial economy. Yanov has written that the ob- 
kom secretaries were "the fixers and chasers" after scarce resources 
who made the provincial economy work. If the economy were de- 
centralized to allow greater initiative and if efforts were made to 
ensure greater agricultural productivity, one element of the obkom 
secretary's power — the ability to find resources to meet the plan — 
would diminish. For this reason, the obkom secretaries formed an 
important source of resistance to Khrushchev's efforts at economic 
reform (see Khrushchev's Reforms and Fall, ch. 2). Western ob- 
servers held that these officials were an important source of oppo- 
sition to Gorbachev's economic reforms because these reforms 
envisaged a greater role for the government and the market at the 
expense of the party. 

District- and City-Level Organization 

In 1988 more than 3,400 district (raion) organizations made up 
the position in the CPSU hierarchy below that of the oblast. Of 
these organizations, 2,860 were located in rural areas and 570 in 
wards of cities. In addition, this hierarchical level encompassed 800 
city (gorod) organizations. 

The structure of these organizations resembled that of organi- 
zations on the republic and oblast levels. In theory, the party con- 
ference, with delegates selected by the PPOs in each district or city, 
elected a committee composed of full and candidate members. In 
practice, the party leadership in the district or town chose the 
delegates to the party conference and determined the composition 
of the district or town committee. Party conferences took place twice 
every five years. In the interim, the district committee (raion 
komitet — raikom) or city committee (gorodskoi komitet — gorkom) was the 
most authoritative body in the territory. The committee consisted 
of party officials, state officials, local Komsomol and trade union 
officers, the chairmen of the most important collective farms, the 
managers of the largest industrial enterprises, some PPO secre- 
taries, and a few rank-and-file party members. 

The raikom or gorkom elected a bureau and a secretariat, which 
supervised the daily affairs of the jurisdiction. The bureau num- 
bered between ten and twelve members, who included party offi- 
cials, state officials, and directors of the most important economic 
enterprises (see Glossary) in the district or city. The composition 



310 



The Communist Party 



of the bureau at this level varied with location. For example, the 
gorkom had no specialist for agriculture, and the rural raikom had 
no specialist for industry. The raikom and gorkom bureaus met two 
to three times per month to review the affairs of the district or city 
and to examine the reports of the PPOs. 

The first secretary of the raikom or gorkom bureau headed the party 
organization at this level. As part of its nomenklatura authority, the 
oblast party organization made appointments to these positions. 
In 1987, however, reports of multicandidate elections for first secre- 
tary of a raikom appeared in the Soviet press. Two candidates com- 
peted for the position of raikom secretary in the Kemerovo and 
Vinnitsa districts. In the case of Kemerovo, Pravda reported that 
the oblast party secretary nominated the candidates, and the party 
conference at the district level setded the contest in a secret ballot. 
The Nineteenth Party Conference called for the institutionaliza- 
tion of multicandidate elections for these and other party positions. 

The secretariat of a raikom and gorkom resembled that of the ob- 
last party committee. In contrast to the party committee of the ob- 
last level, however, the composition of this body varied with 
location. All had a department for agitation and propaganda; an 
organizational department, which staffed the positions for PPO 
secretaries and supervised the performance of the PPOs; and a 
general department, which coordinated the affairs of the district 
and city party organizations by circulating documents, administer- 
ing party work, and preparing the agenda and materials for con- 
ferences, plenums, and bureau meetings. In 1988 the raikom or 
gorkom included a department for either agriculture or industry, 
which supervised those elements of the Soviet economy on the dis- 
trict level. In contrast to efforts to reduce the number of depart- 
ments at higher levels of the party apparatus, no such reduction 
on the district level was planned as of early 1989. 

As in the oblast, until the late 1980s the party organization in 
the district and city tended to involve itself in economic adminis- 
tration and production, which Gorbachev intended to place within 
the purview of the government. The CPSU judged its officials on 
their ability to meet and exceed the state economic plan. Party offi- 
cials used their power as the representatives of the leading politi- 
cal institution in the country to engage themselves in economic 
administration. For fear of offending party officials and in the 
expectation that the party would solve their problems, until the 
late 1980s government and economic administrators were reluc- 
tant to exercise initiative and take responsibility in economic 
matters. The ability of raikom and gorkom secretaries to involve them- 
selves in government activities formed one aspect of their power 



311 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

and influence within their respective jurisdictions. During the 
Khrushchev era, these officials resisted reforms that led to a dimi- 
nution of their responsibilities (see Khrushchev's Reforms and Fall, 
ch. 2). 

Primary Party Organization 

In 1987 primary party organizations (PPOs) numbered 441 ,851 . 
The PPO was the lowest rung on the party's organizational lad- 
der. (PPOs were called party cells until 1934.) One PPO existed 
in every factory, office, collective farm, military unit, and educa- 
tion institution having more than three party members (see table 
22, Appendix A). According to the Party Rules, the highest organ 
of the PPO was the party meeting, which comprised all party mem- 
bers in a given work unit. PPOs having more than fifty members 
could be divided into groups led by steering committees. Party meet- 
ings generally convened at least once a month, although the in- 
terim could be longer for PPOs having more than 300 members. 
The party meetings elected a bureau of two or three persons to 
supervise the affairs of the PPO. The secretary of the PPO, nomi- 
nally elected by the party meeting but actually appointed by the 
next highest party organization, managed the work of the PPO and 
was a full-time, salaried member of the party. 

The PPO performed many important tasks. It admitted new 
members into the party; apprised rank-and-file party members of 
their duties, obligations, and rights within the party; organized agi- 
tation and propaganda sessions to educate party members in the 
ideology of Marxism-Leninism; stimulated productivity in the en- 
terprise; encouraged efficiency and effectiveness of production 
methods and innovation; and disciplined party members for derelic- 
tion of their duties. An enumeration of the activities of the PPO 
only begins to suggest the importance of this organization to the 
party. For several reasons, the PPO was an important factor under- 
lying the party's control over society. The PPO possessed what was 
known as the right of verification (pravo kontrolia), checking how 
managers met the demands of their position and how faithfully they 
implemented the plan for their enterprise. This power led to the 
PPO secretary's involvement in the day-to-day affairs of the enter- 
prise. Moreover, factory managers or chairmen of collective farms, 
as well as chiefs of the enterprise trade unions normally were party 
members; consequently, they were bound by democratic central- 
ism to follow the orders and suggestions of their party leader, the 
PPO secretary. Thus, the PPO secretary and not the manager car- 
ried primary responsibility to the party for the work of the enter- 
prise. 



312 



The Communist Party 



The PPO itself was also critical to the implementation of the eco- 
nomic plan. The state devised its economic plan on the basis of 
party requirements. The government implemented the party's plan, 
and therefore the norms of democratic centralism obligated the 
PPOs to enforce it. At the enterprise level, the principal activity 
of the PPO secretary and of all party members was to stimulate 
production. Party members had to set an example with their work 
and encourage nonmembers to fulfill their production quotas and 
improve their labor productivity. 

The PPO not only conveyed party policies to nonmembers in 
the enterprise but also apprised the party hierarchy of the mood 
of the masses and prevented the formation of groups to promote 
grass-roots change. Rank-and-file party members were scattered 
throughout the Soviet Union. Party members had hands-on ex- 
perience in their jobs and knew nonparty members personally. Be- 
cause of this intimate knowledge of their surroundings, party 
members were in a position to inform their superiors about the 
concerns and problems of people in all walks of life. With this 
knowledge, the party could take steps to stem potential sources of 
unrest, to institute new methods of control, and, more generally, 
to tailor its policies toward the maintenance of the population's 
political quiescence. 

Nomenklatura 

The nomenklatura referred to the CPSU's authority to make ap- 
pointments to key positions throughout the governmental system, 
as well as throughout the party's own hierarchy. Specifically, the 
nomenklatura consisted of two separate lists: one was for key posi- 
tions, appointments to which were made by authorities within 
the party; the other was for persons who were potential candidates 
for appointment to those positions. The Politburo, as part of its 
nomenklatura authority, maintained a list of ministerial and ambas- 
sadorial positions that it had the power to fill as well as a separate 
list of potential candidates to occupy those positions. 

Coextensive with the nomenklatura were patron-client relations. 
Officials who had the authority to appoint individuals to certain 
positions cultivated loyalties among those whom they appointed. 
The patron (the official making the appointment) promoted the 
interests of clients in return for their support. Powerful patrons, 
such as the members of the Politburo, had many clients. Moreover, 
an official could be both a client (in relation to a higher-level pa- 
tron) and a patron (to other, lower-level officials). 

Because a client was beholden to his patron for his position, the 
client was eager to please his patron by carrying out his policies. 



313 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

The Soviet power structure essentially consisted of groups of vas- 
sals (clients) who had an overlord (the patron) . The higher the pa- 
tron, the more clients the patron had. Patrons protected their clients 
and tried to promote their careers. In return for the patron's ef- 
forts to promote their careers, the clients remained loyal to their 
patron. Thus, by promoting his clients' careers, the patron could 
advance his own power. 

The Party's Appointment Authority 

The nomenklatura system arose early in Soviet history. Lenin wrote 
that appointments were to take the following criteria into account: 
reliability, political attitude, qualifications, and administrative abil- 
ity. Stalin, who was the first general secretary of the party, also 
was known as "Comrade File Cabinet" (Tovarishch Kartotekov) 
for his assiduous attention to the details of the party's appointments. 
Seeking to make appointments in a more systematic fashion, Sta- 
lin built the party's patronage system and used it to distribute his 
clients throughout the party bureaucracy (see Stalin's Rise to Power, 
ch. 2). Under Stalin's direction in 1922, the party created depart- 
ments of the Central Committee and other organs at lower levels 
that were responsible for the registration and appointment of party 
officials. Known as uchraspredy, these organs supervised appoint- 
ments to important party posts. According to American Sovietol- 
ogist Seweryn Bialer, after Brezhnev's accession to power in October 
1964, the party considerably expanded its appointment authority. 
However, in the late 1980s some official statements indicated that 
the party intended to reduce its appointment authority, particu- 
larly in the area of economic management, in line with Gorbachev's 
reform efforts. 

At the all-union level, the Party Building and Cadre Work Depart- 
ment supervised party nomenklatura appointments. This department 
maintained records on party members throughout the country, 
made appointments to positions on the all-union level, and approved 
nomenklatura appointments on the lower levels of the hierarchy. The 
head of this department sometimes was a member of the Secretariat 
and was often a protege of the general secretary. 

Every party committee and party organizational department — 
from the all-union level in Moscow to the district and city levels — 
prepared two lists according to their needs. The basic (osnovnaid) 
list detailed positions in the political, administrative, economic, mili- 
tary, cultural, and educational bureaucracies that the committee 
and its department had responsibility for filling. The registered 
(uchetnaid) list enumerated the persons suitable for these posi- 
tions. 



314 



The Communist Party 



Patron-Client Relations 

An official in the party or government bureaucracy could not 
advance in the nomenklatura without the assistance of a patron. In 
return for this assistance in promoting his career, the client car- 
ried out the policies of the patron. Patron-client relations thus help 
to explain the ability of party leaders to generate support for their 
policies. The presence of patron-client relations between party offi- 
cials and officials in other bureaucracies also helped to account for 
the control the party exercised over Soviet society. All of the 2 mil- 
lion members of the nomenklatura system understood that they held 
their positions as a result of a favor bestowed on them by a superior 
official in the party and that they could be replaced if they mani- 
fested disloyalty to their patron. Self-interest dictated that mem- 
bers of the nomenklatura submit to the control of their patrons in 
the party. 

Clients sometimes could attempt to supplant their overlord. For 
example, Khrushchev, one of Lazar M. Kaganovich's former pro- 
teges, helped to oust the latter in 1957. Seven years later, Brezh- 
nev, a client of Khrushchev, helped to remove his boss from power. 
The power of the general secretary was consolidated to the extent 
that he placed his clients in positions of power and influence (see 
General Secretary: Power and Authority, this ch.). The ideal for 
the general secretary, writes Soviet emigre observer Michael 
Voslensky, "is to be overlord of vassals selected by oneself." 

Several factors explain the entrenchment of patron-client rela- 
tions. First, in a centralized nondemocratic government system, 
promotion in the bureaucratic-political hierarchy was the only path 
to power. Second, the most important criterion for promotion in 
this hierarchy was not merit but approval from one's supervisors, 
who evaluated their subordinates on the basis of political criteria 
and their ability to contribute to the fulfillment of the economic 
plan. Third, political rivalries were present at all levels of the party 
and state bureaucracies but were especially prevalent at the top. 
Power and influence decided the outcomes of these struggles, and 
the number and positions of one's clients were critical components 
of that power and influence. Fourth, because fulfillment of the eco- 
nomic plan was decisive, systemic pressures led officials to con- 
spire together and use their ties to achieve that goal. 

The faction led by Brezhnev provides a good case study of patron- 
client relations in the Soviet system. Many members of the Brezh- 
nev faction came from Dnepropetrovsk, where Brezhnev had served 
as first secretary of the provincial party organization. Andrei P. 
Kirilenko, a Politburo member and Central Committee secretary 



315 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

under Brezhnev, was first secretary of the regional committee of 
Dnepropetrovsk. Volodymyr Shcherbyts'kyy, named as first sec- 
retary of the Ukrainian apparatus under Brezhnev, succeeded 
Kirilenko in that position. Nikolai A. Tikhonov, appointed by Brezh- 
nev as first deputy chairman of the Soviet Union's Council of 
Ministers, graduated from the Dnepropetrovsk College of Metal- 
lurgy and presided over the economic council of Dnepropetrovskaya 
Oblast. Finally, Nikolai A. Shchelokov, minister of internal affairs 
under Brezhnev, was a former chairman of the Dnepropetrovsk 
soviet. 

Patron-client relations had implications for policy making in the 
party and government bureaucracies. Promotion of trusted sub- 
ordinates into influential positions facilitated policy formation and 
policy execution. A network of clients helped to ensure that a pa- 
tron's policies could be carried out. In addition, patrons relied on 
their clients to provide an accurate flow of information on events 
throughout the country. This information assisted policy makers 
in ensuring that their programs were being implemented. 

Party Membership 

The CPSU placed stringent requirements on its membership. 
Party members had to work indefatigably on the party's behalf, 
actively participate in the political life of the country, and set a 
moral and political example for those who were not members of 
the party. Despite these obligations, the benefits of membership 
compelled many to join the party. Membership in the CPSU was 
a requirement for career advancement. In addition, a career in 
the party could also serve as a means for upward mobility from 
the working class or peasantry into white-collar positions. Moreover, 
for those interested in political activities, the party was a vehicle 
for political participation. 

Party members had a duty to increase their political knowledge 
and qualifications. Such efforts indicated a willingness to make a 
career of party work. The CPSU has set up a series of party schools 
whose courses range in difficulty from the elementary to the ad- 
vanced. These schools were located at the local, intermediate, and 
all-union levels of the political system. Training in party schools 
strengthened the ideological, political, and administrative abilities 
of party members, especially officials of the CPSU apparatus. 
Although the stated purpose of party training was to better equip 
party members to perform their jobs, it acted as one additional 
means to promote a common outlook and ideological perspective 
among members of the party apparatus. 



316 



Honor boards, such as this one in Narva, Estonian Republic, 
recognized the work of CPSU members. 

Courtesy Jonathan Tetzlaff 

Selection Procedures 

The standards for admission into the CPSU required that a per- 
son be at least eighteen years old, have a good personal record, 
and possess some knowledge of the principles of Marxism- Leninism. 
Those who wanted to become party members had to secure refer- 
ences from at least three party members of at least five years' stand- 
ing. In the case of prospective members entering the party from 
the Komsomol, one of the references had to have been written by 
a member of the Komsomol city or district committee. These refer- 
ences attested to the candidate's moral, civic, and professional quali- 
ties. 

Only the PPO general meeting could accept or reject an appli- 
cation for membership (see Primary Party Organization, this ch.). 
Before the general meeting, however, the PPO secretary reviewed 
that person's application, and the secretary's recommendations 
counted heavily in the selection process. The district or town party 
committee then confirmed the acceptance of the prospective mem- 
ber. Upon acceptance, the individual became a candidate (non- 
voting) member of the party for one year. The new candidate paid 
an admission fee of 2 rubles (for value of the ruble — see Glossary) 



317 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

and monthly dues that varied from 10 kopeks to 3 percent of salary, 
depending on the person's income. 

During the candidate stage, the individual had to faithfully carry 
out responsibilities assigned by the party. Candidates had to demon- 
strate their ability to cope with the obligations of party member- 
ship, which included attendance at party meetings, improvements 
in labor productivity, and efforts to strengthen one's understand- 
ing of Marxism-Leninism. After one year, the candidate had to 
again solicit recommendations from three members of five years' 
standing and undergo a review by the PPO secretary. The PPO 
general meeting then voted on the candidate's application for full 
membership, and the district or city organization confirmed the 
acceptance of the full member. 

The Party Rules defined many obligations for CPSU members. 
For example, the party member had to resolutely execute the general 
line and directives of the party, explain to the nonparty masses the 
foreign and domestic policies of the CPSU, and facilitate the 
strengthening of the party's bonds with the people. In addition, 
party members had to strive to increase productivity in their regular 
jobs, improve the quality of their work, and "inject into the econ- 
omy the achievements of science and technology." The Party Rules 
required that members participate in party activities, broaden their 
political horizons, and struggle against any manifestation of bour- 
geois ideology and religious prejudices. Party members had to 
strictly observe the norms of communist morality, place social in- 
terests higher than personal interests, and exhibit modesty and 
orderliness. Party members also undertook criticism of other mem- 
bers and self-criticism in meetings. Criticism and self-criticism un- 
covered conflicts, mistakes, and shortcomings that resulted from 
personal or organizational inadequacies. Once flaws were un- 
covered, criticism and self-criticism generated peer pressure to re- 
move the problem. Finally, party members had to consistently 
promote the foreign policy of the Soviet Union and work to strength- 
en the defense forces of the country. 

In addition to their obligations, full members of the CPSU had 
certain rights. They participated in elections of candidates to party 
organs, and they could be chosen for positions in the hierarchy. 
At party meetings, conferences, meetings of party committees, and 
in the party press, party members could freely discuss issues con- 
nected with the policy and activities of the party. According to the 
Party Rules, party members could criticize any party organ and any 
other party member (including members of the leadership) at party 
meetings, plenums and conferences, and congresses at all levels of 
the party hierarchy. The norms of democratic centralism precluded 



318 



The Communist Party 



such criticism, however. Any party member brave enough to make 
such criticism would have been subject to party discipline and pos- 
sible exclusion from the CPSU. A party member had the right to 
participate in party meetings, bureau sessions, and committees 
when these bodies discussed that person's activities or behavior. 
In addition, a party member could submit questions, statements, 
and suggestions to any party body, including the Central Com- 
mittee, and demand a reply. 

The party could take several forms of disciplinary action against 
members who broke its rules. The lightest penalty was a reprimand, 
followed by a censure. Both of these measures were entered into 
the member's permanent party record. A harsher punishment was 
reduction to candidate status for one year. For severe rule infrac- 
tions, a party member could be expelled. The stigma attached to 
expulsion from the party remained with the individual through- 
out his life and precluded career advancement, access to better hous- 
ing facilities, and educational opportunities for the person's children. 
In some instances, expelled party members have lost high-status 
positions. 

Another form of disciplinary action, which occurred on a wider 
scale, was the so-called "exchange of party documents." This en- 
tailed a review of the party's membership and discussions between 
party members and their superiors, followed by replacement of old 
party cards. The exchange of party documents provided an occa- 
sion for the CPSU to rid itself of members who breached party 
discipline. Party sources reported that exchanges of party cards were 
not purges (see The Period of the Purges, ch. 2). Nevertheless, 
the Russian word chistka, which means purge, was the term the 
party used to describe these exchanges. The last exchange of party 
documents occurred in 1975. 

Several reasons accounted for the desire of Soviet citizens to join 
the party, despite the stringent obligations it placed upon its mem- 
bers and the formal nature of their rights. The primary reason for 
joining the party was opportunity for career advancement and so- 
cial mobility. Party membership was a prerequisite for promotion 
to managerial positions in Soviet society. In addition, party mem- 
bership opened up the possibility for travel abroad, admission to 
special shops for consumer goods, access to Western media, and 
cash bonuses for work. Party membership also provided the chance 
for upward mobility from the working class or peasantry into profes- 
sional, white-collar positions in the party apparatus. Children of 
lower-class parents tended to enter this "political class" in order 
to raise their status. Having become members of this class, these 



319 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

people could then ensure their offspring access to the amenities 
Soviet life has to offer. 

Party membership had other, less tangible rewards. It enabled 
an individual to claim membership in an organization linked to 
Russian historical tradition, to the Bolshevik Revolution, and to 
the world-historical movement the CPSU claimed to lead. In ad- 
dition, as the dominant political institution in society, the party 
offered the most important outlet for political participation. These 
benefits encouraged a feeling of in-group solidarity with other mem- 
bers of the CPSU and a sense of civic efficacy. 

Training 

The CPSU obligated its members constantly to improve their 
understanding of Marxism- Leninism and political qualifications. 
Toward these goals, the party operated a series of schools to train 
party members in Marxism-Leninism, to recruit rank-and-file 
members into its administration, and to communicate party prin- 
ciples and policies to the membership, particularly to officials in 
the apparatus. 

Party schools operated at all levels of the hierarchy. The primary 
party schools formed the elementary level of the training system. 
These schools were informal; they could be as simple as a circle 
of workers who met after work to discuss the life of Lenin, politi- 
cal and economic affairs, or current party policies. Since the 
mid-1960s, enrollments in these schools have been declining be- 
cause of the increased education level of the population. These 
courses were open to nonmembers, whose participation could be 
used to demonstrate a desire to join the party. Trade unions and 
the Komsomol administered schools with similar levels of instruc- 
tion. Trade unions operated "people's universities" and "schools 
of communist labor." The former treated a variety of topics and 
enrolled students in a group that advanced as a class from level 
to level. Schools of communist labor were oriented to problems of 
production. Lectures often dealt with the correct attitude toward 
work. 

The party had a variety of schools at the intermediate level. 
Schools of the Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism, administered 
by district and city party committees, required some knowledge 
of Marxism-Leninism. Classes were small, which permitted in- 
dividual attention to students and the examination of subject mat- 
ter in detail. Courses in these schools reviewed the fundamentals 
of party doctrine and included subjects such as party history, po- 
litical economy, and Marxist-Leninist philosophy. Since the 
mid-1970s, enrollment in these schools has grown. In 1981 the party 



320 



The Communist Party 



formed the Schools for Young Communists. These institutions 
offered instruction to candidate members of the party and to peo- 
ple who had recently become full members. 

The Schools of Scientific Communism offered more specialized 
instruction at the intermediate level. In 1989 topics included cur- 
rent events in domestic and international affairs. Schools for the 
party's economic specialists offered training in such areas as party 
direction of trade unions, economic policy, and the theory of de- 
veloped socialism. Schools for ideological specialists included courses 
for PPO secretaries and group leaders, party lecturers, and media 
personnel. These schools offered courses on the principles of 
Marxism-Leninism and on the means and methods of the party's 
control over ideological affairs. 

Party training at the intermediate level also encompassed semi- 
nars in Marxist-Leninist theory and methods. Members of the scien- 
tific intelligentsia and professors at institutions of higher education 
attended these seminars. Subjects included philosophical and so- 
cial science topics: the scientific- technical revolution, economics, 
the theory of proletarian internationalism, communist morality, 
and socialist democracy. 

Finally, the party offered courses for raising the qualifications 
of party and soviet officials at the provincial and republic levels. 
These courses involved supplementary training in a variety of sub- 
jects first treated in lower-level party schools. Party officials also 
could take correspondence courses offered either by the higher party 
school of their republic or under the auspices of the Academy of 
Social Sciences of the CPSU Central Committee. 

At the all-union level, the Higher Party School and the Acad- 
emy of Social Sciences in Moscow were staffed with instructors 
attached to the CPSU Central Committee departments (see 
Secretariat, this ch.). These schools trained officials to enter the 
party elite at the all-union level. The Higher Party School gradu- 
ated about 300 students per year; the Academy of Social Sciences 
graduated approximately 100. 

Training at party schools served a variety of purposes. Willing- 
ness to participate in party courses at the lowest level could indi- 
cate an aspiration to join the party or ensure advancement from 
candidate status to that of full member. Once in the party, partici- 
pation in training courses demonstrated a desire to enter into 
full-time, salaried party work. Indeed, such coursework was a 
prerequisite for this kind of a career. Party training also created 
an in-group consciousness among those who attended courses, par- 
ticularly at the intermediate and all-union levels. Various kinds 
of specialists from wide-ranging backgrounds took these courses; 



321 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

hence, party schools integrated officials from all sectors of the party 
and government bureaucracies and inculcated a shared conscious- 
ness of their duties and status. Equally important, party schools, 
according to American Soviet specialists Frederick C . Barghoorn 
and Thomas F. Remington, underscored the CPSU's legitimacy 
by providing a theoretical basis for its policies. Courses in party 
schools examined current events and policy issues from the party's 
perspective. Thus, party training counteracted the insular view- 
points that could arise as a result of officials' attention to their nar- 
row fields of specialization. 

Social Composition of the Party 

The Bolshevik organization began as a tightly knit group of 
revolutionaries whose leadership was dominated by members of 
the Russian, Jewish, and Polish intelligentsia but whose mass base 
consisted mainly of industrial workers from Russia's largest cities. 
By the late 1980s, for the most part the social characteristics of the 
party membership reflected the social and economic changes the 
Soviet Union had undergone over the more than seventy years of 
its existence. Consequently, professionals made up a percentage 
of party membership that exceeded their percentage of the popu- 
lation, and the number of party members with a secondary or higher 
education has constantly risen since the mid- 1930s. Similarly, the 
party has recruited its members from all nationalities. As a result, 
the gap between the ethnic groups that dominated the party and 
other ethnic groups in the early years has narrowed. However, this 
gap has not disappeared completely. By contrast, the percentage 
of women in the party has continued to lag behind the percentage 
of women in the population. Altogether, the social characteristics 
of party members confirmed their status as an elite in the society. 
The social composition of the party reflected the decision made by 
Stalin in the 1930s and reaffirmed since that time both to make 
professional achievement and merit the primary criteria for admis- 
sion into the party and to strive for the proportional representa- 
tion of all groups within the party's ranks. 

In 1987 the CPSU numbered more than 19 million members 
(see table 23, Appendix A). Party members constituted about 9.7 
percent of the adult population. This figure represented an increase 
of 4 percent since 1956. Most of that increase, however, reflected 
the CPSU's rapid growth between 1956 and 1964 under the leader- 
ship of Khrushchev. Since 1971 the share of party membership in 
the adult population has risen only 0.3 percent. 

In general, party members possessed a high occupational status 
in society, which belied the party's claims to be the vanguard of 



322 



The Communist Party 



the working class. The party did not publish statistics on the social 
status of its membership. Nevertheless, the CPSU did publish statis- 
tics on its membership's • 'social position," which denoted the class 
affiliation of members at the time they joined the CPSU. Workers 
and peasants who joined the party often used their membership 
to advance into white-collar positions. Were statistics available on 
the social status of party members, they would reveal the dispropor- 
tion^ representation of white-collar professionals in party ranks. 
Available figures on the social position of party members, however, 
also indicated the importance of professionals in the party (see table 
24, Appendix A). In 1987 persons who were members of the white- 
collar professions when they joined the CPSU made up 43.1 per- 
cent of the party, while those who were members of the working 
class made up 45 . 3 percent and those who were peasants made up 
11.6 percent. By contrast, in 1987 Soviet sources reported that 27.8 
percent of the working population consisted of white-collar profes- 
sionals, 62.7 were workers, and 9.5 percent were peasants. The 
high percentage of members who were professionals when they 
joined the party, together with the accelerated advancement into 
white-collar positions by members who were workers or peasants, 
suggested that the CPSU was not a proletarian party but rather 
one dominated by white-collar professionals. 

Statistics on the percentage of party members with higher edu- 
cation replicated this pattern (see table 25, Appendix A). Between 
1967 and 1987, the percentage of party members who had com- 
pleted higher education almost doubled. In 1987 over 32 percent 
of the party membership had received a degree from an institu- 
tion of higher education. By contrast, in that same year only 7.3 
percent of the general population had received a similar degree. 
Again, the figures indicate that the CPSU was less the party of 
the working class than the party of the white-collar intelligentsia. 

The ethnic composition of the party reflected further dispropor- 
tions between the party and the population as a whole (see table 
26, Appendix A). In 1922 the share of Russian members in the 
party exceeded their proportion of the population by 19 percent. 
Since that time, the gap between Russians and other nationalities 
has narrowed. In 1979 Russians constituted 52 percent of the Soviet 
population; however, they constituted 60 percent of the party in 
1981. Moreover, the percentage of Russians in the party appara- 
tus was probably even greater than their percentage in the party 
as a whole. 

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, other major nationalities whose 
share of party membership exceeded their proportion of the popu- 
lation were the Belorussians, the Georgians, and the Jews (the 



323 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

percentage of Jews in the party was twice their percentage in the 
Soviet population as a whole). The proportion of Ukrainians and 
Armenians in the party equaled their share of the Soviet popula- 
tion. Armenians and Jews shared certain characteristics that help 
explain their relatively high proportion of party membership. Mem- 
bers of these nationalities tended to be more urbanized, educated, 
and geographically mobile than the norm. These characteristics 
correlated strongly with party membership. The Georgians, al- 
though not as urbanized as the Armenians or the Jews, tended to 
be highly educated. Other reasons explained the relatively high per- 
centage of party membership among the Belorussians and Ukrain- 
ians. These two East Slavic nationalities are culturally close to the 
Russians. In addition, the central party apparatus has sought to 
demonstrate that political opportunities for Belorussians and 
Ukrainians equal those for Russians. 

Those major nationalities having the lowest proportion of party 
members compared with their share of the population were the 
Tadzhiks, Uzbeks, Kirgiz, and Turkmens of Central Asia, and 
the Moldavians. The Central Asians resisted membership in an 
organization they perceived to be dominated by East Slavs in gen- 
eral and Russians in particular. Similar considerations applied to 
the Moldavians, whose territory the Soviet Union seized from 
Romania in World War II (see Other Major Nationalities, ch. 4). 

The percentage of women in the party lagged far behind the 
proportion of women in the population (see table 27, Appendix 
A). In 1987 women comprised 29.3 percent of the party and 53 
percent of the population. Several reasons explained women's lack 
of interest in joining the party. First, party work required a sub- 
stantial commitment of time from each member (see Selection 
Procedures, this ch.). Approximately 80 percent of Soviet women 
held jobs and, in addition, spent long hours caring for children, 
shopping, and running households. Second, Muslim peoples, who 
constituted a high percentage of the Soviet population, discouraged 
female participation in politics. Third, Soviet women might not 
enter the CPSU because they perceived that the social mores of 
that organization restricted their ability to move up the hierarchy 
into positions of power. The 307 members elected to the CPSU 
Central Committee at the Twenty- Seventh Party Congress in 1986 
included only 13 women. In the 1980s, women made up only about 
33 percent of PPO secretaries, 20 percent of district party organi- 
zation secretaries, and 3.2 percent of obkom bureau members. No 
woman has been a full member of the Politburo. Thus, the higher 
the level in the party hierarchy, the lower the percentage of women. 



324 



The Communist Party 



In his report to the CPSU Central Committee on January 27, 
1987, General Secretary Gorbachev called for the promotion of 
more women and representatives of national minorities and eth- 
nic groups into leading positions in the party. That policy, together 
with the pursuit of other policies that encourage greater urbaniza- 
tion, geographic mobility, and higher education levels, may lead 
to a greater proportion of women and national minorities in in- 
fluential party positions. If women and national minorities per- 
ceive the opportunity to move up the hierarchy into positions of 
power, a greater number of these underrepresented groups might 
be willing to join the party and thus help to balance the sexual and 
ethnic composition of the CPSU with that of the population as a 
whole. 

* * * 

A plethora of works has been written on all aspects of the CPSU. 
The following general works on the Soviet Union contain chap- 
ters on the party: John A. Armstrong's Ideology, Politics, and Govern- 
ment in the Soviet Union, John N. Hazard's The Soviet System of 
Government, and Frederick C. Barghoorn and Thomas F. Reming- 
ton's Politics in the USSR. The best general treatment of the CPSU 
is found in The Soviet Communist Party by Ronald J . Hill and Peter 
Frank. A number of specialized treatments of various aspects of 
the party also have been written. Alfred G. Meyer's Leninism re- 
mains a classic study of the thought, political program, and tactics 
of Lenin. Nina Tumarkin's Lenin Lives! examines the Lenin cult 
in the Soviet Union. George Breslauer's Khrushchev and Brezhnev 
as Leaders treats attempts by Khrushchev and Brezhnev to build 
authority in the political system. For thorough analyses of 
intermediate-level and local-level party organizations, works by Joel 
C. Moses are helpful. Scholars who have examined the nomenklatura 
and patron-client relations include John P. Willerton, Jr., Bohdan 
Harasymiw, and Gyulajozsza. Michael Voslensky's Nomenklatura 
provides an insider's account of the ruling class. John H. Miller's 
"The Communist Party" treats the social characteristics of the 
CPSU's membership. (For further information and complete 
citations, see Bibliography.) 



325 



Chapter 8. Government Structure 

and Functions 



Meeting of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet 



THE GOVERNMENT OF the Soviet Union administered the 
country's economy and society. It implemented decisions made by 
the leading political institution in the country, the Communist Party 
of the Soviet Union (CPSU). 

In the late 1980s, the government appeared to have many charac- 
teristics in common with Western, democratic political systems. 
For instance, a constitution established all organs of government 
and granted to citizens a series of political and civic rights. A legis- 
lative body, the Congress of People's Deputies, and its standing 
legislature, the Supreme Soviet, represented the principle of popular 
sovereignty. The Supreme Soviet, which had an elected chairman 
who functioned as head of state, oversaw the Council of Ministers, 
which acted as the executive branch of the government. The chair- 
man of the Council of Ministers, whose selection was approved 
by the legislative branch, functioned as head of government. A con- 
stitutionally based judicial branch of government included a court 
system, headed by the Supreme Court, that was responsible for 
overseeing the observance of Soviet law by government bodies. Ac- 
cording to the Constitution of 1977, the government had a federal 
structure, permitting the republics some authority over policy im- 
plementation and offering the national minorities the appearance 
of participation in the management of their own affairs. 

In practice, however, the government differed markedly from 
Western systems. In the late 1980s, the CPSU performed many 
functions that governments of other countries usually perform. For 
example, the party decided on the policy alternatives that the gov- 
ernment ultimately implemented. The government merely ratified 
the party's decisions to lend them an aura of legitimacy. The CPSU 
used a variety of mechanisms to ensure that the government ad- 
hered to its policies. The party, using its nomenklatura (see Glos- 
sary) authority, placed its loyalists in leadership positions throughout 
the government, where they were subject to the norms of democratic 
centralism (see Glossary). Party bodies closely monitored the ac- 
tions of government ministries, agencies, and legislative organs. 

The content of the Soviet Constitution differed in many ways 
from typical Western constitutions. It generally described existing 
political relationships, as determined by the CPSU, rather than 
prescribing an ideal set of political relationships. The Constitution 
was long and detailed, giving technical specifications for individual 



329 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

organs of government. The Constitution included political state- 
ments, such as foreign policy goals, and provided a theoretical 
definition of the state within the ideological framework of Marxism- 
Leninism (see Glossary). The CPSU could radically change the 
constitution or remake it completely, as it has done several times 
in the past. 

The Council of Ministers acted as the executive body of the 
government. Its most important duties lay in the administration 
of the economy. The council was thoroughly under the control of 
the CPSU, and its chairman — the prime minister — was always a 
member of the Politburo (see Politburo, ch. 7). The council, which 
in 1989 included more than 100 members, was too large and un- 
wieldy to act as a unified executive body. The council's Presidi- 
um, made up of the leading economic administrators and led by 
the chairman, exercised dominant power within the Council of 
Ministers. 

According to the Constitution, as amended in 1988, the highest 
legislative body in the Soviet Union was the Congress of People's 
Deputies, which convened for the first time in May 1989. The main 
tasks of the congress were the election of the standing legislature, 
the Supreme Soviet, and the election of the chairman of the 
Supreme Soviet, who acted as head of state. Theoretically, the Con- 
gress of People's Deputies and the Supreme Soviet wielded enor- 
mous legislative power. In practice, however, the Congress of 
People's Deputies met only a few days in 1989 to approve deci- 
sions made by the party, the Council of Ministers, and its own 
Supreme Soviet. The Supreme Soviet, the Presidium of the Su- 
preme Soviet, the chairman of the Supreme Soviet, and the Council 
of Ministers had substantial authority to enact laws, decrees, reso- 
lutions, and orders binding on the population. The Congress of 
People's Deputies had the authority to ratify these decisions. 

The government lacked an independent judiciary. The Supreme 
Court supervised the lower courts and applied the law, as estab- 
lished by the Constitution or as interpreted by the Supreme Soviet. 
The Constitutional Oversight Committee reviewed the constitu- 
tionality of laws and acts. The Soviet Union lacked an adversary 
court procedure. Under Soviet law, which derived from Roman 
law, a procurator (see Glossary) worked together with a judge and 
a defense attorney to ensure that civil and criminal trials uncovered 
the truth of the case, rather than protecting individual rights. 

The Soviet Union was a federal state made up of fifteen repub- 
lics joined together in a theoretically voluntary union. In turn, a 
series of territorial units made up the republics. The republics also 



330 



Government Structure and Functions 

contained jurisdictions intended to protect the interests of nation- 
al minorities. The republics had their own constitutions, which, 
along with the all-union (see Glossary) Constitution, provide the 
theoretical division of power in the Soviet Union. In 1989, however, 
the CPSU and the central government retained all significant 
authority, setting policies that were executed by republic, provin- 
cial (oblast, krai — see Glossary, and autonomous subdivision), and 
district (raion — see Glossary) governments. 

Constitutional Authority of Government 

The political theory underlying the Soviet Constitution differed 
from the political theory underlying constitutions in the West. 
Democratic constitutions are fundamentally prescriptive; they de- 
fine a set of political relations to which their governments and 
citizens aspire. By contrast, Soviet constitutions have purported 
to describe a set of political relationships already in existence. Thus, 
as changes have occurred in the socioeconomic and political sys- 
tems, the government has adopted new constitutions that have con- 
formed to the new sets of realities. 

The 1977 Constitution was generally descriptive; it differed from 
past constitutions in containing a preamble and a section on for- 
eign policy that were prescriptive in tone. The Soviet Union has 
had a series of four constitutions, ratified in 1918, 1924, 1936, and 
1977, respectively. On the surface, the four constitutions have re- 
sembled many constitutions adopted in the West. The differences 
between Soviet and Western constitutions, however, overshadowed 
the similarities. Soviet constitutions appeared to guarantee certain 
political rights, such as freedom of speech, assembly, and religious 
belief. They also identified a series of economic and social rights, 
as well as a set of duties that obligated all citizens. Nevertheless, 
Soviet constitutions did not contain provisions guaranteeing the 
inalienable rights of the citizenry, and they lacked the machinery 
to protect individual rights contained in many democratic consti- 
tutions. Thus, the population enjoyed political rights only to the 
extent that these rights conformed to the interests of building so- 
cialism (see Glossary). The CPSU alone reserved the authority to 
determine what lay in the interests of socialism. Finally, Soviet con- 
stitutions specified the form and content of regime symbols, such 
as the arms, the flag, and the state anthem. 

The four constitutions had provisions in common. These provi- 
sions expressed the theoretical sovereignty of the working class 
and the leading role of the CPSU in government and society. All 
the constitutions have upheld the forms of socialist property (see 



331 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Glossary). Each of the constitutions has called for a system of Soviets, 
or councils, to exercise governmental authority. 

Early Soviet Constitutions 

In the Civil War in France, 1848-1850, Karl Marx maintained 
that constitutions ought to reflect existing class and political rela- 
tionships, not prescribe the nature of such relations. Vladimir I. 
Lenin adopted Marx's understanding of the role of constitutions 
in a state. Of certain provisions in the first Soviet constitution, he 
wrote that they were embodied in it "after they were already in 
actual practice." Joseph V. Stalin rejected a prescriptive pream- 
ble for the 1936 constitution, stating that the constitution should 
''register" the gains of socialism rather than prescribe "future 
achievement." The four Soviet constitutions thus have reflected 
the changes that government and society have undergone over the 
course of Soviet history. 

The 1918 Constitution 

The first constitution, which governed the Russian Soviet Fed- 
erated Socialist Republic, described the regime that assumed power 
in the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 (see Revolutions and Civil War, 
ch. 2). This constitution formally recognized the Bolshevik (see 
Glossary) party organization as the ruler of Russia according to 
the principle of the dictatorship of the proletariat (see Glossary). 
The constitution also stated that under the leadership of the Bolshe- 
viks the workers formed a political alliance with the peasants. This 
constitution gave broad guarantees of equal rights to workers and 
peasants. It denied, however, the right of social groups that op- 
posed the new government or supported the White armies in the 
Civil War (1918-21) to participate in elections to the Soviets or to 
hold political power. 

Supreme power rested with the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, 
made up of deputies from local Soviets across Russia. The steer- 
ing committee of the Congress of Soviets — known as the Central 
Executive Committee — acted as the "supreme organ of power" 
between sessions of the congress and as the collective presidency 
of the state. 

The congress recognized the Council of People's Commissars 
(Sovet narodnykh komissarov — Sovnarkom) as the administrative 
arm of the young government. (The Sovnarkom had exercised 
governmental authority from November 1917 until the adoption 
of the 1918 constitution.) The constitution made the Sovnarkom 
responsible to the Congress of Soviets for the "general adminis- 
tration of the affairs of the state." The constitution enabled the 



332 



Government Structure and Functions 



Sovnarkom to issue decrees carrying the full force of law when the 
congress was not in session. The congress then routinely approved 
these decrees at its next session. 

The 1924 Constitution 

The 1924 constitution legitimated the December 1922 union of 
the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, the Ukrainian 
Republic, the Belorussian Republic, and the Transcaucasian Soviet 
Federated Socialist Republic to form the Union of Soviet Socialist 
Republics. This constitution also altered the structure of the cen- 
tral government. It eliminated the Congress of Soviets and estab- 
lished the Central Executive Committee as the supreme body of 
state authority. In turn, the constitution divided the Central Ex- 
ecutive Committee into the Soviet of the Union, which would 
represent the constituent republics, and the Soviet of Nationali- 
ties, which would represent the interests of nationality groups. The 
Presidium of the Central Executive Committee served as the col- 
lective presidency. Between sessions of the Central Executive Com- 
mittee, the Presidium supervised the government administration. 
The Central Executive Committee also elected the Sovnarkom, 
which served as the executive arm of the government. 

The 1936 Constitution 

The 1936 constitution, adopted on December 5, 1936, and also 
known as the " Stalin" constitution, redesigned the government. 
The constitution repealed restrictions on voting and added universal 
direct suffrage and the right to work to rights guaranteed by the 
previous constitution. The constitution also provided for the direct 
election of all government bodies and their reorganization into a 
single, uniform system. 

The 1936 constitution changed the name of the Central Execu- 
tive Committee to the Supreme Soviet of the Union of Soviet So- 
cialist Republics. Like its predecessor, the Supreme Soviet contained 
two chambers: the Soviet of the Union and the Soviet of Nationali- 
ties. The constitution empowered the Supreme Soviet to elect com- 
missions, which performed most of the Supreme Soviet's work. As 
under the former constitution, the Presidium exercised the full powers 
of the Supreme Soviet between sessions and had the right to inter- 
pret laws. The chairman of the Presidium became the titular head 
of state. The Sovnarkom (after 1946 known as the Council of Min- 
isters) continued to act as the executive arm of the government. 

The 1977 Constitution 

On October 7, 1977, the Supreme Soviet unanimously adopted 

333 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



the fourth constitution, also known as the "Brezhnev" Constitu- 
tion, named after CPSU general secretary Leonid I. Brezhnev (see 
Supreme Soviet, this ch.). The preamble stated that "the aims of 
the dictatorship of the proletariat having been fulfilled, the Soviet 
state has become the state of the whole people." That is, accord- 
ing to the new Constitution, the government no longer represent- 
ed the workers alone but expressed "the will and interests of the 
workers, peasants, and intelligentsia, the working people of all na- 
tions-and nationalities in the country." Compared with previous 
constitutions, the Brezhnev Constitution extended the bounds of 
constitutional regulation of society. The first chapter defined the 
leading role of the CPSU and established principles for the manage- 
ment of the state and the government. Later chapters established 
principles for economic management and cultural relations. 

The 1977 Constitution was long and detailed. It included twenty- 
eight more articles than the 1936 constitution. The Constitution 
explicitly defined the division of responsibilities between the cen- 
tral and republic governments. For example, the Constitution 
placed the regulation of boundaries and administrative divisions 
within the jurisdiction of the republics. However, provisions es- 
tablished the rules under which the republics could make such 
changes. Thus, the Constitution concentrated on the operation of 
the government system as a whole. 

Amendments to the 1977 Constitution 

In October 1988, draft amendments and additions to the 1977 
Constitution were published in the Soviet media for public dis- 
cussion. Following the public review process, the Supreme Soviet 
adopted the amendments and additions in December 1988. The 
amendments and additions substantially and fundamentally 
changed the electoral and political systems. Although Soviet 
officials touted the changes as a return to "Leninist" forms and 
functions, citing that the Congress of People's Deputies had 
antecedents in the Congress of Soviets, they were unprecedented 
in many respects (see Central Government, this ch.). The posi- 
tion of chairman of the Supreme Soviet was formally designated 
and given specific powers, particularly leadership over the legisla- 
tive agenda, the ability to issue orders (rasporiazheniia), and formal 
power to conduct negotiations and sign treaties with foreign govern- 
ments and international organizations. The Constitutional Over- 
sight Committee, composed of people who were not in the Congress 
of People's Deputies, was established and given formal power to 
review the constitutionality of laws and normative acts of the cen- 
tral and republic governments and to suggest their suspension and 



334 



Government Structure and Functions 

repeal. The electoral process was constitutionally opened up to mul- 
tiple candidacies, although not to multiple-party candidacies. A 
legislative body — the Supreme Soviet — was to convene for regu- 
lar spring and fall sessions, each lasting three to four months. Un- 
like the old Supreme Soviet, however, the new Supreme Soviet was 
indirectly elected by the population, being elected from among the 
members of the Congress of People's Deputies, 

Amendment Process 

Adoption of the Constitution was a legislative act of the Supreme 
Soviet. Amendments to the Constitution were likewise adopted by 
legislative act of that body. Amendments required the approval 
of a two-thirds majority of the deputies of the Congress of Peo- 
ple's Deputies and could be initiated by the congress itself; the 
Supreme Soviet, acting through its commissions and committees; 
the Presidium or chairman of the Supreme Soviet; the Constitu- 
tional Oversight Committee; the Council of Ministers; republic 
Soviets; the Committee of People's Control; the Supreme Court; 
the Procuracy; and the chief state arbiter. In addition, the leading 
boards of official organizations and even the Academy of Sciences 
(see Glossary) could initiate amendments and other legislation. 

Soviet constitutions have been frequendy amended and have been 
changed more often than in the West. Nevertheless, the 1977 Con- 
stitution attempted to avoid frequent amendment by establishing 
regulations for government bodies in separate, but equally author- 
itative, enabling legislation, such as the Law on the Council of 
Ministers of July 5, 1978. Other enabling legislation has included 
a law on citizenship, a law on elections to the Supreme Soviet, a 
law on the status of Supreme Soviet deputies, regulations for the 
Supreme Soviet, a resolution on commissions, regulations on local 
government, and laws on the Supreme Court and the Procuracy. 
The enabling legislation provided the specific and changing oper- 
ating rules for these government bodies. 

Constitutional Rights 

Like democratic constitutions, the Soviet Constitution included 
a series of civic and political rights. Among these were the rights 
to freedom of speech, press, and assembly and the right to reli- 
gious belief and worship. In addition, the Constitution provided 
for freedom of artistic work, protection of the family, inviolability 
of the person and home, and the right to privacy. In line with the 
Marxist-Leninist ideology of the regime, the Constitution also grant- 
ed certain social and economic rights. Among these were the rights 



335 




336 



Panoramic view of Moscow, photographed from Moscow University 

Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 



337 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

to work, rest and leisure, health protection, care in old age and 
sickness, housing, education, and cultural benefits. 

Unlike democratic constitutions, however, the Soviet Constitu- 
tion placed limitations on political rights. Article 6 effectively elimi- 
nated organized opposition to the regime by granting to the CPSU 
the power to lead and guide society. Article 39 enabled the govern- 
ment to prohibit any activities it considered detrimental by stat- 
ing that "Enjoyment of the rights and freedoms of citizens must 
not be to the detriment of the interests of society or the state.' ' 
Article 59 obliged citizens to obey the laws and comply with the 
standards of socialist society as determined by the party. The re- 
gime did not treat as inalienable those political and socioeconomic 
rights the Constitution granted to the people. 

Citizens enjoyed rights only when the exercise of those rights 
did not interfere with the interests of socialism, and the CPSU alone 
had the power and authority to determine policies for the govern- 
ment and society (see Lenin's Conception of the Party, ch. 7). For 
example, the right to freedom of expression contained in Article 
52 could be suspended if the exercise of that freedom failed to be 
in accord with party policies. Until the era of glasnost' (see Glos- 
sary), freedom of expression did not entail the right to criticize the 
regime. The government had the power to ban meetings by un- 
sanctioned religious groups, and violations of the laws that allowed 
limited religious expression were severely punished under the repub- 
lics' criminal codes. 

The Constitution also failed to provide political and judicial 
mechanisms for the protection of rights. Thus, the Constitution 
lacked explicit guarantees protecting the rights of the people, con- 
tained in the first ten amendments to the United States Constitu- 
tion. In fact, the Supreme Soviet has never introduced amendments 
specifically designed to protect individual rights. Neither did the 
people have a higher authority within the government to which 
to appeal when they believed their rights had been violated. The 
Supreme Court had no power to ensure that constitutional rights 
were observed by legislation or were respected by the rest of the 
government. Although the Soviet Union signed the Final Act of 
the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (Helsinki 
Accords — see Glossary), which mandated that internationally recog- 
nized human rights be respected in the signatory countries, no 
authority outside the Soviet Union could ensure citizen rights and 
freedoms. The government generally has failed to observe the pro- 
visions of this act. In the late 1980s, however, realigning constitu- 
tional and domestic law with international commitments on human 
rights was publicly debated. 



338 



Government Structure and Functions 

Role of the Citizen 

Article 59 of the Constitution stated that citizens' exercise of their 
rights was inseparable from performance of their duties. Articles 
60 through 69 defined these duties. Citizens were obliged to work 
and to observe labor discipline. The legal code labeled evasion of 
work as "parasitism" and provided severe punishment for this 
crime. The Constitution also obligated citizens to protect socialist 
property and oppose corruption. All citizens performed military 
service as a duty to safeguard and "enhance the power and pres- 
tige of the Soviet state." Violation of this duty was a betrayal of 
the motherland and the gravest of crimes. Finally, the Constitu- 
tion obligated parents to train their children for socially useful work 
and to raise them as worthy members of socialist society. 

The Constitution and other legislation protected and enforced 
Soviet citizenship. Legislation on citizenship granted equal rights 
of citizenship to naturalized citizens as well as to the native born. 
Laws also specified that citizens could not freely renounce their 
citizenship. Citizens were required to apply for permission to do 
so from the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, which could reject 
the application if the applicant had not completed military service, 
had judicial duties, or was responsible for family dependents. In 
addition, the Presidium could refuse the application to protect na- 
tional security. However, the Presidium could revoke citizenship 
for defamation of the Soviet Union or for acts damaging to na- 
tional prestige or security. 

State Symbols 

The Constitution specified the state flag and the arms of the Soviet 
Union. The flag had a red field, the traditional color of proletari- 
an revolution. On the flag was a gold hammer and sickle, which 
represented the workers and the peasants, respectively, and the red 
star, which symbolized Soviet power, bordered in gold to contrast 
with the red field. The arms had a hammer and a sickle superim- 
posed on a globe, with rays of the sun radiating from below, sur- 
rounded by sheaves of wheat. The rays of the sun represented the 
dawn of a new world, and the sheaves of wheat symbolized the 
economic plenty that was to be created in Soviet society. The in- 
scription "Proletarians of all countries, unite!" — from Karl Marx 
and Friedrich Engels's The Communist Manifesto — was written on 
a red banner wound around the sheaves of wheat. The arms and 
flags of the republics carried the same visual themes, underscor- 
ing the unity of all the republics in the federation. 

The Constitution specified that the state anthem be selected and 



339 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

confirmed by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. In 1989 the 
anthem was the Anthem of the Soviet Union, which had been com- 
posed under Stalin and contained fulsome praise of the dictator. 
After Stalin's death, the Presidium removed the offensive lyrics. 

Central Government 

Soviet political and legal theorists defined their government as 
a parliamentary system because in principle all power in the govern- 
ment emanated from the Congress of People's Deputies. In addi- 
tion, according to the Constitution the Supreme Soviet elected both 
its own leadership and that of the all-union administrative and ju- 
dicial agencies, which were responsible to it. In fact, the congress 
was too large to effectively exercise power, and it met only for short 
periods every year. When in session, the congress ratified legisla- 
tion already promulgated by the Council of Ministers, the minis- 
tries, and the Supreme Soviet or its Presidium, and it discussed 
domestic and foreign policy. It also set the agenda for activities 
of the Supreme Soviet. 

The lines separating legislative from executive functions were 
rather blurred. Thus, in addition to administering the government 
and the economy, the Council of Ministers could promulgate both 
resolutions that had the force of law and binding administrative 
orders. (The Supreme Soviet, however, had the ability to repeal 
such resolutions and orders.) Individual ministries — the chief ad- 
ministrative organs of the government — had the power to make 
laws in their respective fields. Thus, the legislative authority in this 
system was highly dispersed. In the late 1980s, some officials criti- 
cized law jnaking by organs other than the Supreme Soviet and 
called for further amendments to the Constitution to give the 
Supreme Soviet greater authority over law making. 

The CPSU effectively exercised control over the government. 
Leaders of the government were always party members and served 
on such party bodies as the Politburo and the Central Committee 
(see Central Party Institutions, ch. 7). In their role as party lead- 
ers, government officials participated in the formation of political, 
social, and economic policies. In addition, these officials were subject 
to the norms of democratic centralism, which required that they 
carry out the orders of the CPSU or face party discipline (see 
Democratic Centralism, ch. 7). Equally important, as part of its 
nomenklatura authority, the party had appointment power for all 
important positions in the government hierarchy (see Nomen- 
klatura, ch. 7). The party also exercised control through the com- 
missions and committees of the Supreme Soviet, which were 
supervised by Central Committee departments and commissions 



340 



Government Structure and Functions 

in their respective fields (see Secretariat, ch. 7). Each ministry con- 
tained its own primary party organization (PPO), which ensured 
that the staff of the ministry daily adhered to party policies (see 
Primary Party Organization, ch. 7). In fact, the party, not the 
ministerial and legislative system, was the leading political insti- 
tution in the Soviet Union (see table 28, Appendix A). 

Administrative Organs 

Article 128 of the Constitution named the Council of Ministers 
as the ' 'highest executive and administrative body of state authori- 
ty" in the Soviet Union. Although the members of the council were 
subject to ratification and change by the Supreme Soviet and the 
Congress of People's Deputies, in 1989 they were actually appointed 
by the party. However, the council was too large to act as an ef- 
fective decision-making body. The Council of Ministers Presidi- 
um, made up of the most influential economic administrators in 
the government, had the power to act in the name of the full coun- 
cil when it was not in session. The chairman of the full Council 
of Ministers, the equivalent of a prime minister, acted as head of 
government and chief economic administrator. In 1989 the chair- 
man of the Council of Ministers, Nikolai I. Ryzhkov, sat on the 
Politburo. 

Below the central institutions stood the ministries, state com- 
mittees, and other governmental organs, which carried out regime 
policies in their respective fields subject to strict party control. The 
ministries managed the economic, social, and political systems. 

Council of Ministers 

The Council of Ministers and its agencies carried out the fol- 
lowing tasks of government: internal and external security of the 
state; economic development, management, and administration; 
and ideological instruction and education. The council enacted the 
decisions of the party and therefore administered, through its 
bureaucratic regulatory and management arms, every aspect of 
Soviet life. As its primary task, however, the council managed the 
economy. 

The Supreme Soviet ratified council membership as submitted 
by the chairman of the Council of Ministers. However, the actual 
selection of council ministers was made by the party leadership as 
part of its nomenklatura authority and was only later confirmed by 
a vote of the Supreme Soviet. Until recently, the Supreme Soviet 
endorsed such decisions unanimously and without debate. In 
mid- 1989, however, Ryzhkov was forced to withdraw some can- 
didates for ministerial posts because some of the committees of the 



341 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Supreme Soviet objected that the candidates were unqualified, thus 
forcing him to submit alternative candidates. 

The Council of Ministers had the power to issue decrees, which 
carried the same force of law as legislative acts of the Supreme 
Soviet. The Supreme Soviet or, indirectly, the Congress of Peo- 
ple's Deputies, could annul a decree if it found the decree to be 
in violation of the Constitution or an existing statute (perhaps upon 
the recommendation of the Constitutional Oversight Committee). 
Orders of the Council of Ministers on administrative matters tech- 
nically did not carry the force of law, but they were binding on 
the ministerial apparatus. Although some decrees were published, 
most remained secret. 

In 1989 the Council of Ministers had more than 100 members, 
including the ministers, the heads of government bureaus and state 
committees, and the chairmen of the councils of ministers of the 
fifteen constituent republics. Soviet scholars maintained that the 
Council of Ministers met ' 'regularly," but reports in the press in- 
dicated that full meetings occurred only quarterly to hear and ratify 
a plan or a report from the chairman. In reality, the Council of 
Ministers delegated most of its functions to its Presidium or to the 
individual ministries. 

Chairman of the Council of Ministers 

The Constitution placed the chairman of the Council of Ministers 
at the head of government. As such, the chairman acted as the prime 
minister and therefore was responsible for enacting party decisions 
and ensuring that their implementation conformed to the inten- 
tions of the party leadership. Three party leaders have served con- 
currendy as the chairman of the Council of Ministers. Lenin chaired 
the Sovnarkom when he was the de facto head of the party. Stalin, 
who was the party's first general secretary, became chairman dur- 
ing World War II and remained in that position until his death 
in 1953. In March 1958, Nikita S. Khrushchev, who had been first 
secretary since 1953 (the title changed to first secretary after Sta- 
lin's death and reverted to general secretary in 1966), took over 
the position of chairman of the Council of Ministers also. After 
Khrushchev's ouster in 1964, in order to avoid too much concen- 
tration of power, the party established a policy that the positions 
of chairman of the Council of Ministers and first (general) secre- 
tary of the party had to be filled by two different persons. 

Because of the heavy involvement of the government in economic 
administration, chairmen of the Council of Ministers since Khru- 
shchev have been experienced industrial administrators rather than 
political decision makers. Although the chairman occupied a seat 



342 



Officials leave the Kremlin after a CPSU Central Committee plenum in 
September 1988. The Council of Ministers and the Presidium of the 
Supreme Soviet buildings are in the background. 

Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 

on the Politburo and thus had a voice in decision making at the 
highest level, this official was obliged to defer to other leaders in 
matters not pertaining to the economy. Thus, the chairman of the 
Council of Ministers had less power than the general secretary and 
perhaps less power than party secretaries who were members of 
the Politburo (see Secretariat, ch. 7). 

Council of Ministers Presidium 

The Constitution stipulated that the Council of Ministers form 
a Presidium as the "standing body of the Council of Ministers" 
to coordinate its work. The Presidium had the power to act on ques- 
tions and speak for the government when the council was not in 
session. Apart from a few references in the Soviet literature indicat- 
ing that the Presidium provided top-level guidance and coordina- 
tion for the economy, little was known about the Presidium. In 
the words of American Sovietologist Jerry F. Hough, it was "a 
most shadowy institution." 

Members of the council's Presidium represented the govern- 
ment's major planning and production organizations. Although 
Soviet sources had differing opinions on its membership, they al- 
ways pointed to the council's chairman, first deputy chairmen, and 



343 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

deputy chairmen as members. Deputy chairmen and first deputy 
chairmen usually served as the head of the State Planning Com- 
mittee (Gosudarstvennyi planovyi komitet — Gosplan); the chairmen 
of the state committees for science and technology, construction, 
and material and technical supply; and the permanent represen- 
tative to the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon — 
see Appendix B). Deputy chairmen could also act as high-level plan- 
ners in the major sectors of the economy, known as industrial com- 
plexes (see The Complexes and the Ministries, ch. 12). These 
planners served as chairmen of the Council of Ministers' bureaus 
and commissions for foreign economic relations, the defense in- 
dustry, machine building, energy, and social development. Some 
Soviet sources included the minister of finance, the chairman of 
the Committee of People's Control, and the CPSU general secre- 
tary as members of the Presidium of the Council of Ministers. Thus, 
the membership of the Presidium indicated that it functioned as 
the "economic bureau" of the full Council of Ministers. 

Ministerial System 

Ministers were the chief administrative officials of the govern- 
ment. While most ministers managed branches of the economy, 
others managed affairs of state, such as foreign policy, defense, 
justice, and finance. Unlike parliamentary systems in which 
ministers are members of the parliament, Soviet ministers were 
not necessarily members of the Supreme Soviet and did not have 
to be elected. Soviet ministers usually rose within a ministry; hav- 
ing begun work in one ministry, they could, however, be appoint- 
ed to a similar position in another. Thus, by the time the party 
appointed an official to a ministerial position, that person was ful- 
ly acquainted with the affairs of the ministry and was well trained 
in avoiding conflict with the party. Until the late 1980s, ministers 
enjoyed long tenures, commonly serving for decades and often dying 
in office. 

Two types of ministries made up the ministerial system: all-union 
and union-republic. All-union ministries oversaw a particular ac- 
tivity for the entire country and were controlled by the all-union 
party apparatus and the government in Moscow. Republic govern- 
ments had no corresponding ministry, although all-union minis- 
tries had branch offices in the republics. Union-republic ministries 
had a central ministry in Moscow, which coordinated the work of 
counterpart ministries in the republic governments. Republic party 
organizations also oversaw the work of the union-republic minis- 
tries in their domain. 



344 



Government Structure and Functions 

The Constitution determined into which category certain minis- 
tries fell. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs was a union-republic 
ministry, reflecting the republics' constitutional right to foreign 
representation. Although the republics had foreign ministries, the 
central Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Moscow in fact conducted 
all diplomacy for the Soviet Union (see The Ministry of Foreign 
Affairs, ch. 10). 

All-union ministries were more centralized, thus permitting great- 
er control over vital functions. Union-republic ministries appeared 
to exercise limited autonomy in nonvital areas. In practice, the cen- 
tral government dominated the union-republic ministries, although 
in theory each level of government possessed equal authority over 
its affairs. 

Union-republic ministries offered some practical economic ad- 
vantages. Republic representatives in the union-republic ministries 
attempted to ensure that the interests of the republics were taken 
into account in policy formation. In addition, the arrangement per- 
mitted the central ministry to set guidelines that the republics could 
then adapt to their local conditions. The central ministry in Moscow 
also could delegate some responsibilities to the republic level. 

The internal structures of both all-union and union-republic 
ministries were highly centralized. A central ministry had large func- 
tional departments and specialized directorates. Chief directorates 
carried out the most important specialized functions in larger minis- 
tries. Specialized functions included foreign contracts, planning, 
finance, construction, personnel, and staff services. The first depart- 
ment of any ministry, staffed by personnel from the Committee 
for State Security (Komitet gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti — KGB), 
controlled security. 

State committees and government agencies similarly were cate- 
gorized as all-union and union-republic organizations. State com- 
mittees oversaw technical matters that involved many aspects of 
government, such as standards, inventions and discoveries, labor 
and social issues, sports, prices, and statistics. Other agencies, such 
as the news agency TASS (see Glossary) and the Academy of 
Sciences, oversaw affairs under their purview. 

Ministries and state committees not only managed the econo- 
my, government, and society but also could make laws. Most minis- 
tries and state committees issued orders and instructions that were 
binding only on their organizations. Some ministries, however, 
could issue orders within a legally specified area of responsibility 
that were binding on society as a whole. These orders carried the 
same force of law as acts of the Supreme Soviet. For example, the 
Ministry of Finance set the rules for any form of foreign exchange. 



345 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Party Control of the Ministerial Apparatus 

The ministries and state committees operated without the ap- 
pearance of party control. Nevertheless, the party ensured its 
authority over the government through several mechanisms de- 
signed to preserve its leading role in society. 

Considerable overlap between the memberships of the Council 
of Ministers and leading party bodies facilitated both policy coor- 
dination between the two organizations and party control. The 
chairman of the Council of Ministers normally occupied a seat on 
the Politburo, which gave him additional authority to ensure the 
implementation of his decisions. In 1989 the first deputy chairman 
of the Council of Ministers, Iurii D. Masliukov, was promoted to 
full-member status on the Central Committee, and both he and 
deputy chairman Aleksandra P. Biriukova were candidate mem- 
bers of the Politburo. In early 1989, Viktor M. Chebrikov, the 
head of the KGB, and Eduard A. Shevardnadze, the minister of 
foreign affairs, were also Politburo members. In addition, most 
ministers and chairmen of state committees were either full or 
candidate members of the Central Committee (see Central Com- 
mittee, ch. 7). Thus, the norms of democratic centralism obliged 
council members to adhere to party policies. 

Within the Council of Ministers and the ministries, the party 
used its nomenklatura authority to place its people in influential po- 
sitions. Nomenklatura refers both to the positions that the Central 
Committee apparatus of the party has the power to fill and to a 
list of people qualified to fill them. Approximately one- third of the 
administrative positions in the council bureaucracy, including the 
most important ones, were on the nomenklatura list. Occupants of 
these positions well understood that the party could remove them 
if they failed to adhere to its policies. 

Finally, in what is known as dual subordination, the staff of each 
ministry was required to respond to orders and directions from its 
primary party organization (PPO), as well as to the ministries' hi- 
erarchy. Party members on the staff of the ministry were bound 
by the norms of democratic centralism to obey the orders of the 
secretary of the PPO, who represented the CPSU hierarchy in the 
ministry. The secretary of the PPO ensured that CPSU policies 
were carried out in the day-to-day activities of the ministries. 

Congress of People's Deputies 

In 1989 the Congress of People's Deputies stood at the apex of 
the system of Soviets and was the highest legislative organ in the 
country. Created by amendment to the Constitution in December 



346 



Government Structure and Functions 

1988, the Congress of People's Deputies theoretically represented 
the united authority of the congresses and Soviets in the republics. 
In addition to its broad duties, it created and monitored all other 
government bodies having the authority to issue decrees. In 1989 
the Congress of People's Deputies, however, was largely a ceremonial 
forum meeting only a few days a year to ratify and debate party 
and government decisions and to elect from its own membership 
the Supreme Soviet to carry out legislative functions between sit- 
tings of the congress. Other responsibilities of the Congress of Peo- 
ple's Deputies included changing the Constitution, adopting decisions 
concerning state borders and the federal structure, ratifying govern- 
ment plans, electing the chairman and first deputy chairman of the 
Supreme Soviet, and electing members of the Constitutional Over- 
sight Committee. 

In the elections that took place under the 1988 law on electing 
deputies to the Congress of People's Deputies, several candidates 
were allowed to run for the same office for the first time since 1917. 
Nevertheless, no party except the CPSU was allowed to field can- 
didates, and a large bloc of seats was reserved for CPSU members 
and members of other officially sanctioned organizations. In the 
Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian republics and to a far lesser 
degree in the Belorussian Republic, however, popular fronts, which 
were tantamount to political parties, fielded their own candidates. 
The regime maintained that these elections demonstrated that the 
Soviet people could freely choose their own government. 

The Congress of People's Deputies that was elected in March 
through May 1989 consisted of 2,250 deputies— 1,500 from the 
electoral districts and national-territorial electoral districts and 750 
from officially sanctioned organizations, including the CPSU. In 
all, 5,074 individuals were registered as candidates. A main elec- 
tion was held in which 89.8 percent of the eligible voters, or 172.8 
million people, participated. Following the main election, runoff 
elections were held in districts in which a candidate failed to ob- 
tain a majority of the votes cast in the main election. Runoff elec- 
tions took place in 76 out of 1 ,500 electoral districts. Repeat elections 
were also held in 198 electoral districts where less than one-half 
of the eligible voters in the district voted. Official organizations 
also held elections in which 84.2 percent of the eligible voters, or 
162 million people, participated. Five repeat elections were for or- 
ganizations. Of the 2,250 deputies elected, 8.1 percent were new- 
ly elected to the legislature. 

The CPSU has used several means to exercise control over the 
activities of the legislative system. Since 1964 the chairman of the 
Supreme Soviet's Presidium has been a member of the Politburo, 



347 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

and other members of the Presidium have sat on the party's Cen- 
tral Committee. In addition, since 1977 CPSU general secretaries 
have usually held the post of chairman of the Presidium of the 
Supreme Soviet, although Mikhail S. Gorbachev, at first, did not 
hold this post. Also, the party has had a large role in determining 
which of the elected deputies would serve as deputies in the Supreme 
Soviet. As part of their own nomenklatura authority, local party or- 
ganizations have selected candidates to run in the elections. The 
commissions and committees, which had some power to oversee 
government policy, have accepted direction from the CPSU's Cen- 
tral Committee departments and their chairmen, and a large 
proportion of their memberships has consisted of CPSU members. 
In the Congress of People's Deputies elected in 1989, about 87 per- 
cent, or 1,957 deputies, were members or candidate members of 
the CPSU. 

Elections to the Congress of People's Deputies 

In 1989 three categories of deputies were selected to the Con- 
gress of People's Deputies: those representing the CPSU and offi- 
cially recognized organizations; those representing the population 
as divided into residential electoral districts; and those represent- 
ing the population as divided into national territories. In 1989 one- 
third (750) of the deputies were elected in each category. Quotas 
for deputies were assigned to the various official organizations, elec- 
toral districts, and national-territorial electoral districts. The larg- 
est organizational quotas were reserved for the CPSU, trade unions, 
collective farms (see Glossary), Komsomol (see Glossary), veterans, 
retired workers, and the Committee of Soviet Women. Minor but 
officially sanctioned groups such as stamp collectors, cinema fans, 
book lovers, and musicians were also represented. Because individu- 
al voters belonged to several different constituencies, they could 
vote in elections for several deputies. 

In principle, voters in nationwide elections had the freedom to 
vote for the party-endorsed candidate or for other candidates on 
the ballot (if any), to write in the name of another candidate, or 
to refrain from voting. In the early 1989 elections, some of the can- 
didates officially endorsed by the CPSU were rejected by the voters, 
including high-level party officials, such as Iurii Solov'ev, the party 
secretary of Leningrad. 

The regime considered voting a duty rather than a right. Citizens 
age eighteen and older voted in soviet elections, and those age twenty- 
one and older were eligible to be elected to the Congress of Peo- 
ple's Deputies. Persons holding governmental posts, however, could 
not be elected deputy to the soviet that appointed them. Citizens 



348 



Building housing the Supreme Soviet and the Council of Ministers 

of the Tadzhik Republic in Dushanbe 
Building housing the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet 
of the Kirgiz Republic in Frunze 
Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 



349 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

had the right to participate in election campaigns and the right to 
campaign for any candidate. 

Deputies and Citizen Involvement 

Deputies to the Congress of People's Deputies represented a cross 
section of the various economic and professional groups in the popu- 
lation. According to the official Credentials Commission report, 
in terms of occupation 24.8 percent of the deputies to the congress 
were "workers in industry, construction, transport, or communi- 
cations," 18.9 percent were in agriculture, and of both these groups 
23.7 percent were ordinary workers and peasants. Managers in 
industry and agriculture made up 6.8 percent and 8.5 percent of 
the deputies, respectively. Party secretaries at various levels made 
up 10.5 percent of the deputies. Military officers made up 3.6 per- 
cent of the deputies. In terms of age, 88.6 percent were under age 
sixty, while 8.3 percent were under age thirty. Regarding level of 
education, 75.7 percent possessed complete or incomplete higher 
education, and 6.2 percent were full or corresponding members 
of the central or republic academies of sciences. Nevertheless, selec- 
tion procedures underrepresented some segments of society. Only 
15.6 percent of the delegates were women, and just seven of the 
deputies (0.3 percent) were religious leaders. 

Supreme Soviet 

The Supreme Soviet served as the highest organ of state power 
between sittings of the Congress of People's Deputies. The Supreme 
Soviet formally appointed the chairman of the Council of Ministers, 
ratified or rejected his candidates for ministerial posts and super- 
vised their work, and adopted economic plans and budgets and 
reported on their implementation. Through its chairman, the Su- 
preme Soviet represented the country in formal diplomacy. It also 
had the authority to appoint the Defense Council, confer military 
and diplomatic ranks, declare war, ratify treaties, and repeal acts 
of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the chairman of the 
Supreme Soviet, and the Council of Ministers. 

The Supreme Soviet has traditionally delegated its powers to the 
government bodies it has elected and nominally supervised. The 
Supreme Soviet reserved the right to review and formally approve 
their actions, and in the past it always gave this approval. Actions 
of other government bodies elected by the Supreme Soviet became 
law with force equal to the Supreme Soviet's own decisions (see 
Administrative Organs, this ch.). The commissions and commit- 
tees have played a minor role in ensuring that the language of legis- 
lation was uniform. In 1989 they took an active role in judging 



350 



Government Structure and Functions 

the qualifications of candidates for ministerial bodies and in ques- 
tioning governmental operations. 

Organs of the Supreme Soviet 

The Supreme Soviet has functioned with the help of several 
secondary organs. The Presidium has acted as the steering com- 
mittee of the Supreme Soviet while it was in session. In 1989 both 
chambers of the Supreme Soviet — the Soviet of the Union and the 
Soviet of Nationalities — met either individually or jointly in ses- 
sions planned to last six to eight months. Each chamber had com- 
missions and committees that prepared legislation for passage, 
oversaw its implementation, and monitored the activities of other 
governmental bodies. In 1989 the Supreme Soviet also had four- 
teen joint committees, and each chamber had four commissions. 

Presidium 

In 1989 the Presidium, as designated by the Constitution, had 
forty-two members. The Presidium was made up of a chairman, 
a first vice chairman, fifteen vice chairmen (who represented the 
supreme Soviets of the fifteen republics), the chairmen of the Soviet 
of the Union and the Soviet of Nationalities, the chairman of the 
Committee of People's Control, and the twenty-two chairmen of 
the commissions and committees of the Supreme Soviet. Only a 
few members regularly resided in Moscow, where the Presidium 
has always met. Before 1989 the Presidium membership served 
a symbolic function through the inclusion of twenty-one at-large 
members, made up of factory workers, peasants, scientists, profes- 
sionals, and leaders of professional organizations. Valentina Te- 
reshkova, the first woman in space, was the most prominent of these 
at-large members. The purpose of this broadened membership was 
to show that all strata of society participated in the state's leading 
organ. In addition, some high-level party figures who were not 
members of the government sat on the Presidium as a symbol of 
CPSU authority in the legislature. For instance, General Secre- 
tary Gorbachev sat on the Presidium as an at-large member from 
1985 to 1988. 

Prior to 1989, the Presidium was the leading legislative organ 
between sessions of the Supreme Soviet, which met only a few days 
a year and held formal sessions only once every two months. An- 
nouncements of Presidium decrees, however, appeared in the press 
nearly every day, which indicated that the Presidium's staff worked 
full time. Presidium decrees, issued over the signatures of the chair- 
man and the secretary, merely certified and legitimated decisions 
made by the CPSU. Nevertheless, decrees issued in the Presidium's 



351 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

name demonstrated wide-ranging powers to supervise the govern- 
ment bureaucracy. 

The 1988 amendments and additions to the Constitution reduced 
the powers of the Presidium by making it more of an agenda-setting 
and administrative body (see The 1977 Constitution, this ch.). Ac- 
cording to Article 1 19 of the Constitution, the Presidium was autho- 
rized to convene sessions of the Supreme Soviet and organize their 
preparation, coordinate the activities of the commissions and com- 
mittees of the Supreme Soviet, oversee conformity of all-union and 
republic laws with the Constitution, confer military and diplomatic 
ranks, appoint and recall diplomats, issue decrees and adopt reso- 
lutions, and declare war or mobilize troops in between sessions of 
the Supreme Soviet, among other duties. 

Chairman 

The office of chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet 
before 1 989 was little more than a ceremonial and diplomatic con- 
venience. The chairman had the formal authority to sign treaties 
and to receive the credentials of diplomatic representatives. The 
power of the person occupying the office stemmed from other po- 
sitions that person may have held. In the past, CPSU general secre- 
taries who also served as chairmen of the Presidium have given 
priority to their party duties rather than to the ceremonial duties 
of the chairmanship. Taking this consideration into account, the 
1977 Constitution provided for the office of first deputy chairman 
to relieve the chairman of most ceremonial duties. When the chair- 
manship has been vacant, the first deputy chairman has acted in 
his place, as Vasilii Kuznetsov did after Brezhnev's death and be- 
fore Iurii V. Andropov assumed the chairmanship. Gorbachev 
assumed the office of chairman in October 1988. The 1988 amend- 
ments and additions to the Constitution retained the post of first 
deputy chairman in recognition of its usefulness in relieving the 
legislative burden on the person occupying the positions of gen- 
eral secretary of the party and chairman of the Supreme Soviet. 

The 1988 amendments and additions to the Constitution sub- 
stantially altered the status of the chairman of the Presidium of 
the Supreme Soviet by making him also chairman of the Supreme 
Soviet and having him elected by the Congress of People's Deputies. 
By designating a formal chairman of the Supreme Soviet, the Con- 
stitution changed the status of the head of state from a collective 
Presidium to a single chairman. Also, the Constitution for the first 
time listed responsibilities of the chairman of the Supreme Soviet. 
These responsibilities included the exercise of leadership over the 



352 



Government Structure and Functions 

preparation of agendas of the Congress of People's Deputies and 
the Supreme Soviet, the signing of laws and treaties, the negotia- 
tion of treaties, the submission of reports on domestic and foreign 
policy, and the submission of candidates for first deputy chairman 
of the Supreme Soviet, members of the Constitutional Oversight 
Committee, chairman of the Council of Ministers, and other can- 
didates for leading government posts. The Constitution also stipu- 
lated that the chairman of the Supreme Soviet head the Defense 
Council, a body that determined broad military policy and funding. 

Soviet of the Union and Soviet of Nationalities 

The two chambers that made up the Supreme Soviet — the Soviet 
of the Union and the Soviet of Nationalities — were selected from 
among the membership of the Congress of People's Deputies at 
the beginning of a convocation by a general vote of the deputies. 
The members of the Soviet of Nationalities were selected by each 
republic's delegation to the congress (in actuality by the repub- 
lic's party officials) on the basis of eleven deputies from each union 
republic, four deputies from each autonomous republic (see Glos- 
sary), two deputies from each autonomous oblast (see Glossary), 
and one deputy from each autonomous okrug (see Glossary). The 
members of the Soviet of the Union were selected on the basis of 
the population of the union republics and regions. One-fifth of the 
membership of each chamber was changed each year from the pool 
of congress deputies. 

The two-chamber system has attempted to balance the interests 
of the country as a whole with those of its constituent nationali- 
ties. The Soviet of the Union and the Soviet of Nationalities could 
meet either separately or jointiy. Officials elected from each chamber 
could preside over the sessions. Either chamber could propose legis- 
lation. Legislation passed by majorities in each chamber did not 
need to be referred to joint session. If the two chambers met in 
joint session, the chairman of the Supreme Soviet presided. If the 
chairman was absent, the first deputy chairman presided. Disagree- 
ments between the two chambers, if they occurred, could be referred 
to a conciliation commission, then back to the chambers sitting in 
joint session. If still unresolved, the question would be decided by 
the Congress of People's Deputies. 

The two chambers of the Supreme Soviet have exercised equal pow- 
ers and have shared equal status, although they theoretically served 
different purposes. The Soviet of the Union, established in 1924, grew 
out of the system of workers' councils at the time of the Bolshe- 
vik Revolution (see Revolutions and Civil War, ch. 2). It has 
been the primary venue for discussion of issues on socioeconomic 



353 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



development of the country as a whole, the rights and duties of 
citizens, foreign policy, defense, and state security. The Soviet of 
Nationalities, also established in 1924, ostensibly represented the 
interests of the national minorities in the central government. Be- 
cause of its limited power, however, its significance remained more 
symbolic than real. Its sphere of authority included only issues of 
national and ethnic rights and interethnic relations. Nevertheless, 
the regime has traditionally pointed to the existence of this body 
as proof that the country's nationalities had an equal voice in de- 
cision making and policy formation. 

Sessions of the Supreme Soviet 

Until 1989 the Supreme Soviet was convoked for five-year terms 
but met in session only for a few days twice a year. Thus, each 
five-year convocation had ten or more sessions. The Supreme Soviet 
elected to a five-year term in early 1989 was the twelfth convoca- 
tion. According to the 1988 amendments and additions to the Con- 
stitution, the Supreme Soviet was slated to meet daily, holding two 
sessions a year, with each lasting three to four months. 

Councils of elder members, meeting briefly before sessions, have 
traditionally helped organize the meetings of both chambers. The 
staff of the Presidium has assisted in the preparatory paperwork. 
At the twelfth convocation in 1989, the two councils of elders met 
in a joint session chaired by Gorbachev to discuss procedures for 
opening the session, the leadership of the chambers, the agendas, 
and the composition and functions of commissions and commit- 
tees. The councils have scheduled meetings of the two chambers 
in separate session — one after the other — in the same semicircular 
amphitheater of the Presidium building in the Kremlin, although 
joint sessions of both chambers have taken place in the Great Hall 
of the Palace of Soviets. The oldest deputy has opened the sessions. 
The two chambers then have elected chairmen and two vice chair- 
men on the recommendations of the councils of elders. The chair- 
men have set speaker lists and ensured the observance of the 
established schedule. Until the next session, when they faced another 
election, the chairmen of the two chambers worked with the Presid- 
ium and the chairman of the Supreme Soviet. 

The sessions have followed a standard sequence of events. The 
Supreme Soviet first approved changes in the Council of Ministers 
and changes in its own membership. It then heard regular reports 
on the actions taken by the Council of Ministers and by its own 
Presidium since the last session. Debate and approval of these 
actions followed. The two regular sessions of the Supreme Soviet 
in the spring and fall have served different purposes. The spring 



354 



Government Structure and Functions 



session traditionally has heard reports from government bodies and 
its own commissions. It then has passed legislation based on these 
reports. The second session has approved the budget for the fol- 
lowing year. The fall sessions have also ratified the annual and five- 
year economic plans of the government. 

Commissions and Committees 

Commissions and committees, each made up of some thirty to 
fifty members, have been important because they have prepared 
and proposed legislation for formal approval by the Supreme Soviet 
and monitored activities of ministries and other government bod- 
ies. Each chamber of the Supreme Soviet had fourteen commit- 
tees, which had joindy shared functions, and four commissions, 
which had unique functions. In 1989 the commissions and com- 
mittees were tasked by the Congress of People's Deputies and the 
Supreme Soviet with examining myriad issues, among them eth- 
nic strife, economic autonomy for the republics, the draft economic 
plan and budget, efficiency in agriculture, social policy, legal re- 
form, and the conformity of various laws to the Constitution. The 
commissions and committees also evaluated decrees issued by the 
Presidium of the Supreme Soviet that had been rejected by the 
Supreme Soviet and sent to the commissions and committees for 
reworking. 

In the 1984-89 convocation of the Supreme Soviet, 1 ,200 deputies 
served on the commissions (as the committees were called at that 
time), and 800 worked on the draft economic plan and the draft 
budget for the following year. In the 1989-94 convocation, 320 
deputies served on the commissions and 616 served on the com- 
mittees. About one-half of the deputies serving on the commissions 
and committees of the Supreme Soviet were deputies to the Con- 
gress of People's Deputies but were not members of the Supreme 
Soviet. One-fifth of their membership has usually been replaced 
each year by other deputies of the Supreme Soviet or the Congress 
of People's Deputies. 

In making assignments to commissions and committees, the 
preferences and expertise of the deputies were taken into account; 
deputies have included party leaders, scientists, educators, agricul- 
tural specialists, and foreign policy experts. This variegated mem- 
bership not only has obtained contributions of experts on legislation 
but also has permitted the party to communicate its policies to im- 
portant segments of society. In 1989 the four commissions in each 
chamber that had functions unique to the chamber included, among 
others, planning, budgeting, and finance; labor, prices, and social 
policy; transportation, communications, and information sciences; 



355 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

and nationalities policy and interethnic relations. The fourteen com- 
mittees in each chamber that had jointly shared functions covered 
such areas as foreign affairs, ecology, women and family, veterans 
and invalids, youth, glasnost', economic reform, agronomy, and 
construction, among others. In addition to drafting legislation, the 
commissions and committees monitored the activities of the minis- 
tries and other government bodies. Their oversight of the govern- 
ment included evaluating candidates for ministerial posts and 
questioning ministerial personnel while preparing legislation. In 
1989 the committees of the Supreme Soviet rejected several candi- 
dates nominated by the chairman of the Council of Ministers, Ryzh- 
kov, forcing him to submit other, more qualified candidates for 
the posts. Candidates approved by the committees were subject 
to questioning by deputies on the floor of the Supreme Soviet. To 
monitor compliance with existing law, the commissions and com- 
mittees heard ministerial reports and requested materials and docu- 
ments from the ministries and other government bodies. 
Government bodies were required to consider the recommenda- 
tions on government operations of the commissions or committees 
and to report implementation measures to them. 

Prior to 1989, the commissions of the Supreme Soviet had been 
instruments by which the CPSU controlled legislation and super- 
vised the Supreme Soviet and the ministries. In 1989 the CPSU 
remained an important influence over the work of the commissions 
and committees because the vast majority of members were party 
members, and influential party leaders either chaired the commis- 
sions and committees or served as members. The departments of 
the party's Secretariat watched over commissions and committees 
that monitored work under their purview (see Secretariat, ch. 7). 
Although by law government officials were not permitted to serve 
on the commissions and committees, this ban did not apply to party 
officials, so that the membership on the commissions and commit- 
tees was able to overlap with that of the party's departments. 
Through this overlap, party officials were thus able to ensure that 
the Supreme Soviet adhered to party decisions. For example, prior 
to 1989 the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Commission (pres- 
ent-day Foreign Affairs Committee) of the Soviet of the Union was 
usually the second-ranking member of the Politburo. The chair- 
man of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Soviet of National- 
ities was normally the head of the CPSU International Department. 
The deputy chairmen and secretaries of the two commissions 
were also deputy heads of the party's International Depart- 
ment or the Liaison with Communist and Workers' Parties of So- 
cialist Countries Department. Party leaders used these roles to 



356 



Government House, Lenin Square, Baku, Azerbaydzhan Republic 

Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 

conduct diplomacy on behalf of the Soviet Union. Thus, during his 
1984 visit to Britain, Gorbachev acted in his capacity as chairman 
of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Soviet of the Union. As 
of 1989, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee (formerly 
the Foreign Affairs Commission) of the Soviet of the Union was 
no longer a major party figure but was still a party official. 

Legislative Process 

The legislative process has worked in a very formalized man- 
ner. For example, the Ministry of Finance, Gosplan, and other 
institutions submitted economic planning documents to the Soviet 
of the Union's Planning, Budgeting, and Finance Commission and 
to other Supreme Soviet commissions and committees and to repub- 
lic representatives. Deputies of the various commissions and com- 
mittees of both chambers and other individuals met to review the 
documents, hear expert testimony, make amendments, and sub- 
mit the economic plan to the Supreme Soviet. The minister of 
finance and the chairman of the Council of Ministers submitted 
their own reports as well. 

The Supreme Soviet, after debate, traditionally disposed of the 
plan with a resolution and a law. The resolution noted reports on 
the plan delivered by the chairman of Gosplan and the minister 



357 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

of finance. It evaluated the work of the Council of Ministers in 
fulfilling the previous year's plan and instructed the Council of 
Ministers to examine proposals prepared by the commissions and 
committees and those comments made by deputies in the debate 
and then to take appropriate action. The Law of the Plan formally 
ratified the plan, taking into account the work of the commissions 
and committees and setting out in detail budget and plan targets 
for the following year. 

Party Controls 

The CPSU has exercised control over the activities of the 
Supreme Soviet in a variety of ways. Most important has been the 
extent of party membership among the delegates. In the first eleven 
convocations of the Supreme Soviet, party membership averaged 
about 75 percent. Another 15 percent of the delegates were mem- 
bers of the Komsomol. At the twelfth convocation beginning in 
1989, party membership in the Congress of People's Deputies 
amounted to 87 percent, and Komsomol membership amounted 
to 5.9 percent. The party caucus, which received its instructions 
direcdy from the CPSU's central apparatus, was led by party mem- 
bers and controlled legislative procedures. 

Leadership positions in the Supreme Soviet were under the 
nomenklatura of the Politburo. Thus, members of the Presidium, 
all but one of whom were usually party members, abided by the 
decisions of the party leadership or risked losing their positions. 
Members of the Presidium, as well as rank-and-file party mem- 
bers who were elected delegates, were subject to the norms of 
democratic centralism. 

The party controlled the selection process for ordinary deputies 
as well. Local party organs supervised nominations and elections. 
Party officials carefully selected delegates either to ensure the selec- 
tion of party leaders and party stalwarts in the arts, literature, the 
military, and the scientific and scholarly communities, or to re- 
ward rank-and-file members for long years of service to the party 
and government. In the event that delegates proved uncompliant, 
the Constitution granted the party the power to initiate a recall 
election. Recalls have been rare, however. Out of 7,500 deputies 
elected between 1960 and 1985, only 12 have been recalled, main- 
ly for serious personal failings. 

Control Organs 

The term control {kontroV) referred to a system of government and 
public monitoring of every sphere of production, trade, and ad- 
ministration. Through the government's control organs, the party 



358 



Government Structure and Functions 

ensured that the government and society functioned in compliance 
with the interests of socialism. The Supreme Soviet nominally 
formed and directed the three kinds of control organs: the court 
system, the Procuracy, and the Committee of People's Control. 
These control organs administered a system of law that derived 
from the Russian Empire, whose system of law was in turn based 
on Roman law. 

Court System 

Article 151 of the Constitution and the Law on the Supreme 
Court specified the composition of the Supreme Court but assigned 
it few duties and little power. The Supreme Court lacked the 
authority to determine the constitutionality of legislation, to strike 
down laws, or to interpret the law. Unlike the United States 
Supreme Court, the Soviet court did not have the power to estab- 
lish norms of law. The Supreme Court and the lower courts only 
applied legal principles established by the Constitution or inter- 
preted by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. 

The Supreme Court was at the apex of a pyramid of lower courts. 
Cases came to the Supreme Court on appeal from these lower 
courts. The lowest-level court, called the people's court (see Glos- 
sary), was presided over by a professional, elected judge and two 
people's assessors (lay judges) who were also elected. Provincial 
Soviets and republic supreme Soviets elected judges between the 
district level and the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court also has 
created a separate series of military tribunals. The Supreme Soviet 
supervised the application of the law in all these courts to ensure 
uniform standards. 

Procuracy 

The Procuracy (Prokuratura) functioned like a cross between 
a police investigative bureau and a public prosecutor's office. It 
investigated crimes, brought criminals to trial, and prosecuted them. 
The Procuracy also supervised courts and penal facilities within 
its jurisdiction (see The Procuracy, ch. 19). 

The Supreme Soviet appointed the procurator general of the 
Soviet Union for a five-year term. Like other leading positions in 
the Soviet government, the position of the procurator general was 
on the nomenklatura of the central party apparatus. In turn, the procu- 
rator general appointed each officer of the Procuracy, known as 
a procurator (see Glossary), who served at the republic, provin- 
cial, district, or city level. Procurators at all levels theoretically an- 
swered to the Supreme Soviet for their actions. Moreover, they 
derived authority from the procurator general and thus exercised 



359 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

their authority independent of any regional or local government 
body. 

The Procuracy, as well as the Supreme Court, ensured the strict 
and uniform observance of law by all government bodies, enter- 
prises (see Glossary), and public institutions. The Procuracy also 
reviewed all court decisions in both civil and criminal cases. A 
procurator could appeal decisions considered flawed to higher 
courts. The Procuracy was therefore responsible for ensuring the 
uniform application of law in the courts. 

The Procuracy supervised investigations conducted by other 
government agencies. A procurator could file protests in the court 
system when evidence indicated an agency acted illegally. In the- 
ory, these rights of supervision extended to the KGB and other 
security agencies. In practice, however, the KGB often operated 
outside the law. 

Committees of People's Control 

The 1979 Law on People's Control established the committees 
of people's control in each republic under the supervision of the 
central Committee of People's Control. These committees had the 
authority to audit government and economic administration 
records. Officials found guilty of illegalities could be publicly rep- 
rimanded, fined for damages, or referred to the procurator for prose- 
cution. In the late 1980s, the committees of people's control had 
been an invaluable instrument in Gorbachev's efforts at reform 
and restructuring. 

The committees of people's control extended throughout the 
Soviet Union. In 1989, of the more than 10 million citizens who 
served on these organs, 95 percent were volunteers. General meet- 
ings of work collectives at every enterprise and office elected the 
committees for tenures of two and one-half years. The chairman 
of the Committee of People's Control and a professional staff served 
for five years. The chairman sat on the Council of Ministers (see 
Administrative Organs, this ch.). 

Law 

Lacking a common-law tradition, Soviet law did not provide for 
an adversary system in which the plaintiff and the defendant ar- 
gued before a neutral judge. Court proceedings included a judge, 
two people's assessors, a procurator, and a defense attorney and 
provided for free participation by the judge in the trial. The same 
courts heard both civil and criminal cases. Although most cases 
were open to the public, closed hearings were legal if the govern- 
ment deemed it necessary. Judges kept legal technicalities to a 



360 



Government Structure and Functions 

minimum because the court's stated purpose was to find the truth 
of a case rather than to protect legal rights. 

Other aspects of Soviet law more closely resembled the Anglo- 
Saxon system. In theory, all citizens were equal before the law. 
Defendants could appeal convictions to higher courts if they be- 
lieved the sentence was too harsh. Yet, the procurator could also 
appeal if the sentence was considered too lenient. The law also 
guaranteed defendants legal representation and the right to trial 
in their native language or to the use of an interpreter. 

Territorial Administration 

The central government in Moscow and the governments of the 
fifteen republics — consisting of fourteen soviet socialist republics 
(SSR — see Glossary) and the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist 
Republic — were joined in a theoretically voluntary union. The 
republic constitutions and the Soviet Constitution established the 
rules of the federal system. 

The Constitution specified the relationship of the central govern- 
ment to the republics. Article 73 of the Constitution limited the 
central government to the administration of matters requiring cen- 
tral leadership of the country as a whole: national and internal secu- 
rity and the economy. In entering the union, the republics ceded 
these responsibilities to the central government bodies. 

The governmental system below the central level appeared com- 
plicated because it was organized according to the two often 
contradictory principles of geography and nationality. The adminis- 
trative subdivisions of a republic, oblast (roughly equivalent to a 
province), and raion (district) were based primarily on geography. 
The larger republics, such as the Russian and Ukrainian repub- 
lics, were divided into oblasts. But smaller republics (the Latvian, 
Lithuanian, Estonian, Armenian, and Moldavian republics) did 
not have an oblast administration between the republic and the 
district levels. In addition, six large, thinly populated regions in 
the Russian Republic have been designated by the term krai. A 
krai could contain an autonomous oblast or an autonomous okrug 
inhabited by a national minority. About 300 large cities and ap- 
proximately 3,000 rural and urban districts {raiony) made up the 
next lowest government level. In turn, the large cities were divid- 
ed into urban districts, or gorodskie raiony. Approximately 40,000 
village centers made up the rural districts. 

The Russian Republic and some of the other republics also con- 
tained administrative subdivisions with boundaries drawn according 
to nationality or language. The three kinds of such subdivisions 



361 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

included twenty autonomous republics, eight autonomous oblasts, 
and ten autonomous okruga. 

Republic Level 

In theory, the fifteen republics entered into a free and volun- 
tary union of sovereign states when they joined the Soviet Union. 
The Constitution granted the republics the right to secede; nonethe- 
less, as of 1988 the republics had exercised very little sovereignty. 
In 1989, however, the Lithuanian, Estonian, Moldavian, and sever- 
al other republics sought greater national autonomy (see Manifesta- 
tions of National Assertiveness, ch. 4). 

Legal Status 

Long-standing practice has established three nonconstitutional 
requirements for republic status. First, as stated by Stalin in su- 
pervising the writing of the 1936 constitution, the republics had 
to border on territory outside the Soviet Union, enabling them to 
exercise their theoretical right to secede. All republics met this re- 
quirement. Second, the national minority that gave its name to 
the republic was supposed to make up a majority of its population 
and to number more than 1 million people. In 1989 the Kazakhs, 
however, did not constitute a majority of the Kazakh Republic's 
population, constituting about 40 percent of the republic's popu- 
lation of 16.5 million people. Third, republics were supposed to 
have the potential to be economically viable states, should they se- 
cede from the union. 

Over the course of Soviet history, the Supreme Soviet has created 
new union republics within the territory of the Soviet Union. In 
1922 the Soviet Union comprised four republics: the Russian Soviet 
Federated Socialist Republic, the Ukrainian Republic, the Belorus- 
sian Republic, and the Transcaucasian Soviet Federated Socialist 
Republic. The Soviet government elevated Turkmenia (also known 
as Turkmenistan) and Uzbekistan to republic status in 1924, and 
Tadzhikistan split from the Uzbek Republic in 1929 to form a 
separate republic. Kazakhstan and Kirgizia became republics in 
1936. (Turkmenia, Uzbekistan, Kirgizia, and Kazakhstan had been 
part of the Russian Republic.) In 1936 the Transcaucasian Soviet 
Federated Socialist Republic split into the Armenian, Azerbay- 
dzhan, and Georgian republics. 

As the Soviet Union gained territory, the Supreme Soviet created 
new republics. Territory taken from Finland was joined in March 
1940 with the Karelian Autonomous Republic to form the Karelo- 
Finnish Republic. (In 1956 this republic, which had never had a 
majority of the nationality whose name it bore, was demoted to 



362 



Building housing the 
Supreme Soviet of the 
Estonian Republic, Tallin. 
The flag on the adjacent 
tower is the national 
flag of Estonia. 
Courtesy Jonathan Tetzlajf 




the status of an autonomous republic and was renamed the Karelian 
Autonomous Republic.) Moreover, in 1940 Lithuania, Latvia, and 
Estonia were incorporated into the Soviet Union as republics. Fi- 
nally, in 1940 Bessarabia, taken from Romania, was joined with 
the Romanian- speaking portion of the Moldavian Autonomous 
Republic in the Ukrainian Republic to form the Moldavian Soviet 
Socialist Republic. 

Government 

The union republics and the autonomous republics shared the 
same basic principles of government. As in the central government, 
in theory the republic congresses of people's deputies exercised 
authority. In practice, the congresses delegated their power to the 
presidiums of their supreme Soviets and to the republic councils 
of ministers, and the first secretary of the republic party organiza- 
tion set policy for the republic as a whole (see Republic Party Or- 
ganization, ch. 7). Between supreme soviet sessions, the presidium 
and its chairman exercised the legislative powers of the republic. 
By custom, the chairman was a member of the republic's dominant 
nationality, a practice that highlighted the theoretical sovereignty 
of the republics and the influence of their dominant nationality on 
policy making. 

The council of ministers administered the government of the 
republic. The chairman of the council headed the republic but 

363 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

deferred in all matters to the first secretary of the republic's party 
organization. The council of ministers included union-republic 
ministries and republic ministries (see Administrative Organs, this 
ch.). The latter, which had no counterpart in the central govern- 
ment, administered local public services and light industry. Both 
kinds of ministries functioned under dual subordination: they were 
responsible to the central party organization and government and 
to the republic's party organization and government. 

Provincial and District Levels 

Below the union-republic level of territorial administration, sub- 
divisions were complex, varied with each republic, and included 
the following categories: autonomous oblast, autonomous okrug, 
autonomous republic, hrai, oblast, and raion. Only the Russian 
Republic had all categories of subdivision. Western specialists often 
termed the administrations of the autonomous subdivisions, hraia, 
and oblasts generically as provincial and that of the raion as dis- 
trict. Provincial and district governments shared the same struc- 
ture. For example, oblast and district Soviets — single chambers 
elected for two and one-half years — exercised all legislative authori- 
ty. These Soviets met up to four times a year for one-day sessions. 
Between sessions, each soviet delegated its authority to an execu- 
tive committee (ispolniteVnyi homitet — ispolkom), which combined the 
functions of a council of ministers and a presidium. Ispolkom chair- 
men were the chief executives in the oblast and in the district. These 
officials normally sat on the party bureaus at these respective hier- 
archical levels (see Oblast- Level Organization; District- and City- 
Level Organization, ch. 7). 

The ispolkom lacked decision-making authority. Although mem- 
bers of the ispolkom headed departments that managed oblast and 
district services such as education, health, and culture, the central 
government controlled the more important tasks of the adminis- 
tration of justice, the budget, and economic planning and heavy 
industry. In addition, a substantial number of other social services 
were controlled by industrial enterprises and were thus beyond the 
control of local governments. Finally, the party first secretaries ex- 
ercised power at both the oblast and the district levels. These offi- 
cials, not the ispolkom chairmen, were obliged to answer to the party 
for the economic performance of their domain of authority. 

The approximately 52,500 Soviets at the provincial and urban 
and rural district levels had little power. These Soviets, however, 
were important as vehicles for large-scale citizen participation in 
the government. The size of these Soviets ranged from 200 deputies 
in rural areas to more than 1,000 in large cities. Thus, more than 



364 



Government Structure and Functions 

2.3 million people served on local Soviets at any one time, and, 
given the high turnover rate, more than 5 million citizens served 
on the local Soviets each decade. 

Although sessions of the full Soviets at the provincial and dis- 
trict levels were strictly ceremonial, their commissions had some 
influence. The constituencies of these commissions were small, 
enabling them to respond to the needs of the people. Practical ex- 
pertise often determined assignment to these commissions. For ex- 
ample, a teacher could serve on an education commission. Deputies 
served as channels for criticism and suggestions from constituents, 
and the deputies' expertise could qualify them as problem solvers 
on issues that confronted the commission. 

Elections 

In theory, citizens selected the candidates for election to local 
Soviets. In practice, at least before the June 1987 elections, these 
candidates had been selected by local CPSU, Komsomol, and trade 
union officials under the guidance of the district (raiori) party or- 
ganization. Elections took place after six weeks of campaigning, 
and the candidates, always unopposed until 1987, had usually 
received more than 99 percent of the vote. 

Despite the party's historic control over local elections — from 
the nomination of candidates to their unopposed elections — the 
citizens used the elections to make public their concerns. They some- 
times used the furnished paper ballots to write requests for partic- 
ular public services. For example, the 1985 elections to an Omsk 
soviet included instructions to move the airfield farther from the 
city center, construct a new music center, and build parking facil- 
ities for invalids. Subsequently, the Omsk soviet took steps to pro- 
vide these services, all of which had the approval of the relevant 
party authorities. Thus, citizen demands that coincided with the 
interests of the party apparatus have been met through election 
mandates. 

In June 1987, under Moscow's guidance, multicandidate local 
elections took place experimentally in less than 5 percent of the 
districts. Presented with a paper ballot listing more candidates than 
positions, voters indicated their choices by crossing off enough 
names so that the number of candidates matched the number of 
positions. Although generally opposed by local administrators, who 
could no longer assume automatic election, this reform found strong 
support among the general public. In early 1989, steps to limit the 
power of official organizations over the nominating process also 
came under discussion. 



365 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Nevertheless, the outcome of efforts to democratize the local elec- 
tion process remained far from certain in 1989. On the one hand, 
public anger over the autocratic and sometimes arbitrary styles of 
local leaders, their perceived incompetence, and their inability to 
provide needed goods and services forced some reforms. On the 
other hand, opposition by government and party bureaucrats, com- 
bined with the lack of a political culture — that is, experience in 
self-government — obstructed and diluted reforms of the govern- 
ment's structure and functions, as advocated by Gorbachev in the 
late 1980s. 

* * * 

Several general works on Soviet politics contain much useful in- 
formation on the government. Among these works are Darrell P. 
Hammer's The USSR: The Politics of Oligarchy and Jerry F. Hough 
and Merle Fainsod's How the Soviet Union Is Governed. Hough and 
Fainsod devote special attention to the relationship between the 
party and the government. Vadim Medish's The Soviet Union is a 
good reference work on the terminology of government. Other 
works contain more specialized information. Julian Towster's Po- 
litical Power in the USSR provides material on the first three Soviet 
constitutions. Boris Toporin's The New Constitution of the USSR is 
widely viewed as one of the best English-language books available 
on the 1977 Constitution. Lev Tolkunov's How the Supreme Soviet 
Functions covers the legislature, as well as other organs of the cen- 
tral government, from a Soviet perspective. Everett M. Jacobs 's 
Soviet Local Government and Politics is an invaluable source for this 
little- studied aspect of Soviet government. (For further informa- 
tion and complete citations, see Bibliography.) 



366 



Chapter 9. Mass Media and the Arts 



Images from the media and the arts: ballet, television 
broadcasting, and the press 



SINCE THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION of 1917, the leader- 
ship of the Soviet Union has used the mass media and the arts to 
assist in its efforts at changing and regulating society. To propagate 
values encouraging the construction and stabilization of the new 
regime, Vladimir I. Lenin, the Bolshevik (see Glossary) leader, 
centralized political control over the mass media and the primary 
forms of artistic expression. He drew upon nineteenth-century Rus- 
sian radical views that advocated politicizing literature and chal- 
lenging tsarist government policy through artistic protest. Lenin's 
successors manipulated the mass media and the arts in ways that 
preserved and strengthened the regime and the party's supremacy. 

Leaders of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) 
believed that strict control over mass media and the arts was essen- 
tial for governing the country. ''Socialist realism" — an aesthetic 
formula calling for the portrayal of Soviet society in a positive light 
to inspire its constant improvement along the lines of Marxist- 
Leninist ideology — was implemented under Joseph V. Stalin. The 
regime required the media, literature, and the arts to adhere to 
this formula. A vast bureaucracy, which included party and govern- 
ment censorship organs and official political, military, economic, 
and social unions and associations, together with self-censorship 
by writers and artists, ensured a thorough and systematic review 
of all information reaching the public. Under the leadership of 
general secretary of the CPSU Mikhail S. Gorbachev, however, 
Soviet mass media and the arts in the late 1980s were experienc- 
ing a loosening of the controls governing the dissemination of in- 
formation. Nevertheless, the principle of party and government 
control over newspapers, journals, radio, television, and literature, 
which helped to ensure the regime's stability, remained firmly 
intact. 

The technological revolution in the 1970s and 1980s, however, 
hindered rather than helped the regime's control of mass media and 
the arts. New technology disrupted party and government domina- 
tion of mass media and the arts and enabled the population to gain 
greater access to unsanctioned, globally available information. But 
the regime needed to employ the same technological advances to 
maintain its influence and power. The mass media linked the leader- 
ship to the population, and the socialist (see Glossary) system re- 
quired politicized media to endure. The regime's attempt to use this 
new technology while regulating the global flow of information 



369 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

to Soviet citizens presented one of the most difficult challenges to 
the leadership, particularly in light of Gorbachev's campaigns for 
public discussion, democratization, and societal restructuring. 

In the late 1980s, newspapers, journals, magazines, radio, tele- 
vision, films, literature, and music espoused poignant, sensitive, 
and often painful themes that had previously been taboo. The party 
deemed greater tolerance for criticism of the regime essential in 
order to placate the intelligentsia and encourage it to support ef- 
forts for change. Indeed, the censors eased their restrictions to the 
point where, in the late 1980s, penetrating historical analyses crit- 
ical of previous Soviet leaders (including Lenin) and stories about 
the rehabilitation (see Glossary) of banned writers and artists filled 
the pages of newspapers, magazines, and journals. Previously 
proscribed information also appeared in television and radio broad- 
casts and in film and stage performances. Relaxation of restric- 
tions was also apparent in classical music, jazz, rock and roll, and 
the plastic arts. 

Politicization of the Mass Media and the Arts 

The CPSU used the mass media and the arts to enhance its con- 
trol over society. The justification for such controls was developed 
by nineteenth-century Russian revolutionary writers who sought 
to transform Russia through the politicization of literature. Liter- 
ature and literary criticism were to provide means to challenge tsarist 
authority and awaken the political consciousness of the population. 
Specifically, radical writers and artists used "critical realism" (the 
critical assessment of society) in literature, theater, music, and other 
forms of creative expression to denounce the authoritarian system. 
Later, the early Soviet government integrated "critical realism" 
into its policies to serve as a foundation for the politicization of 
the media and literary worlds in the early Soviet government. 

When Lenin and the other Bolshevik leaders governed the coun- 
try, however, they employed the concept of critical realism to ex- 
ercise political control over culture rather than to inspire writers 
and artists to question Bolshevik rule. In its early years, the govern- 
ment established political guidelines for media and the arts. In the 
late 1920s, the regime determined that its enforcement of strin- 
gent publication criteria would be executed by an organization 
formed by the government. The regime chose to use literature as 
its model for politicization of the media and the arts and in 1932 
formed the Union of Writers to enforce the doctrine of socialist 
realism over all writing. All modes of creative thought and artistic 
expression required approval by the regime's authoritative bod- 
ies, rigidly structured after the Union of Writers, for every kind of 



370 



Mass Media and the Arts 



mass media and form of art. Under Stalin's leadership, socialist 
realism dictated the content and form to which writers and artists 
had to adhere. Since Stalin's death in 1953, successive regimes had 
relaxed the restrictions of socialist realism. In the period after Leonid 
I. Brezhnev, hitherto prohibited articles and literary works passed 
CPSU regulations. In the late 1980s, socialist realism was more 
liberally interpreted; it still, however, retained the basic tenets in- 
stituted by the Bolshevik leadership. 

Leninist Principles 

Calls for the politicization of literature and art appeared in the 
works of several radical nineteenth-century Russian thinkers. The 
literary critic Vissarion Belinskii (1811-48) called upon literary 
figures to channel their creative energies toward changing the so- 
ciopolitical environment. He believed that writers could influence 
the masses by challenging the status quo through their works. Even- 
tually, his philosophy of criticism galvanized other writers and other 
artists. Several of his disciples continued to advocate Belinskii' s 
message after he died. Like Belinskii, both the journalist and author 
Nikolai Chernyshevskii (1828-89) and one of his followers, Nikolai 
Dobroliubov (1836-61), a literary critic, argued that progress could 
be achieved only if the individual human being were liberated and 
could espouse his or her own beliefs without feudal oppression. Both 
Chernyshevskii and Dobroliubov motivated writers and artists to 
contribute to this progress by criticizing society and presenting ex- 
amples of human liberation in their works. 

Following these radical ideas, the Bolsheviks, too, rejected the 
notion of art for art's sake. Like the nineteenth-century radical the- 
orists, the Bolsheviks held that media and the arts were to serve 
political objectives. Unlike the critical realists, however, who called 
for protests against social injustice, the Bolsheviks used media and 
the arts to mobilize the population in support of the new sociopo- 
litical system. 

One of the initial means for controlling the population through 
the politicization of the media entailed closing newspapers deemed 
anti-Bolshevik. On November 9, 1917, the new Bolshevik regime 
declared in the Decree of the Press that all nonsocialist newspapers 
would be closed because they endangered the newly formed govern- 
ment. In the November 10, 1917, issue of Pravda — the newspaper 
of the Bolshevik Central Committee and the main voice of the new 
regime — the Bolshevik leadership stated that "the press is one of 
the strongest weapons in the hands of the bourgeoisie" and added 
that, given its capacity to incite rebellion among workers and peas- 
ants by distorting reality, the press ought to be strictly controlled. 



371 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

On January 28, 1918, the Bolshevik leadership decreed that 
"revolutionary tribunals" would be used to prevent the bourgeois 
press from spreading "crimes and misdemeanors against the peo- 
ple." On April 5, 1918, Bolshevik censors instituted further con- 
trols by mandating that "decrees and ordinances of the organs of 
the Soviet power" had to be included in all newspapers. By the 
early 1920s, all non-Bolshevik newspapers had been outlawed, thus 
giving full control to the regime. Such controls continued in the 
late 1980s. 

Socialist Realism 

Similar principles of party control applied to the arts. During 
the early years of Bolshevik rule, the party leadership sought to 
enforce strict guidelines to ensure that literature conformed to 
Bolshevik policies and that dissent was stifled. With the implemen- 
tation of the First Five- Year Plan in 1928, political controls over 
cultural activity increased. By 1932 the party and the government 
had decreed that all writing groups and associations were under 
the control of the Union of Writers. In the early 1930s, socialist 
realism became the official aesthetic doctrine prescribed for artists 
(see Mobilization of Society, ch. 2). According to this formula, art- 
ists, composers, architects, and sculptors had to define history in 
a realistic and truthful light based on its revolutionary evolution. 
Socialist realism demanded portrayal of society as if it had already 
been perfected according to Marxist-Leninist ideology. Under Sta- 
lin's leadership, writers served as the "engineers of human souls" 
and produced novels, short stories, articles, editorials, critiques, 
and satires within a restrictive framework in which they strove to 
glorify Soviet society and socialism. 

Throughout Stalin's rule, socialist realism confined the arts to ex- 
pressing a narrowly controlled party line, but when Nikita S. Khru- 
shchev came to power in 1955, some guidelines were loosened. The 
short literary "thaw" in the late 1950s allowed artists more free- 
dom and creativity. This literary thaw lasted only a few years, and 
with Khrushchev's ouster in 1964, artistic freedom suffered setbacks. 
Further controls prevented artists from expressing themselves out- 
side the boundaries of socialist realism. Artists were imprisoned if 
they protested the party line. 

Brezhnev's death in November 1982, however, initiated a very 
slow but gradual change in the Soviet mass media and the arts. 
Under the successive leadership of Iurii V. Andropov and Kon- 
stantin U. Chernenko, society experienced further loosening of 
party strictures on the media and the arts, albeit mostly during 
Andropov's rule. After Gorbachev assumed power in 1985, the 



372 



Mass Media and the Arts 



system witnessed significant liberalization. Topics previously 
proscribed were discussed and analyzed by all the mass media, and 
the government allowed publication of previously banned materi- 
als. The regime, however, still maintained ultimate control over 
the ways of evaluating the state, criticizing the past, and transform- 
ing the system. Mass media and cultural events enhanced the im- 
age of a "new face" and "new tliinking'' in society. The persistence 
of an elaborate administrative censorship system, however, demon- 
strated that the leadership continued to hold sway over the infor- 
mation revealed publicly. 

Administration of the Mass Media and the Arts 

As of 1987, several party and government organizations exert- 
ed control over the media and the arts. Censorship extended from 
the central party departments and government ministries to their 
republic and regional counterparts. The CPSU Central Commit- 
tee Secretariat contained various departments and committees that 
supervised distinct sectors in the media and the arts (see Secretari- 
at, ch. 7). A government organization, the Main Administration 
for Safeguarding State Secrets in the Press (Glavnoe upravlenie 
po okhrane gosudarstvennykh tain v pechati — Glavlit; see Glos- 
sary), had to sanction any work published in more than nine 
copies. Government ministries responsible for large cultural insti- 
tutions as well as state committees also concerned themselves with 
the regulation of state information (see Administrative Organs, 
ch. 8). The government news organs — the Telegraph Agency of 
the Soviet Union (Telegrafnoe agentstvo Sovetskogo Soiuza — 
TASS) and the News Press Agency (Agentstvo pechati novosti — 
Novosti) — limited information disseminated to domestic and foreign 
newspaper wire services. Ultimately, government institutions in- 
volved in censorship responded to CPSU directives. The party 
ensured that only approved information appeared publicly. Un- 
derground materials existed, but the Committee for State Securi- 
ty (Komitet gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti — KGB) and the Ministry 
of Internal Affairs actively opposed the dissemination of any un- 
sanctioned material. The party, government organizations, and 
security organs combined with the other official censorship con- 
trols to guarantee party domination over the mass media and the 
arts. 

The Party Role 

In the late 1980s, the secretary for ideology and the Central Com- 
mittee's Ideological Department functioned mainly to mold popular 
opinion. The former not only regulated the media but also issued 



373 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

directives to republic and provincial (oblast, kraia — see Glossary, 
and autonomous division) leaders to administer the mass media 
and the arts through the various "letters" departments (the me- 
dia control organs that oversee "letters to the editor" offices), the 
International Information Department (foreign affairs information 
overseer), and the Culture Department. Parallel departments deal- 
ing with ideology and propaganda operated at lower party levels 
throughout the country to centralize control over local publications 
(see Intermediate-Level Party Organizations, ch. 7). Both the cen- 
tral and the local ideology and propaganda departments supervised 
culture, education, and science. In addition, as part of the party's 
nomenklatura (see Glossary) authority, party leaders at all levels select- 
ed editors of newspapers, magazines, and journals within their do- 
mains (see Nomenklatura, ch. 7). According to Soviet emigres 
surveyed in a 1982 Rand study, "The Media and Intra- Elite Com- 
munication in the USSR," the Propaganda Department (which 
was absorbed by the Ideological Department in 1988) wielded great 
power in selections of editors for the central press organs and pub- 
lishing houses. In many instances, these high positions were filled 
by party members who had previously worked in some section of 
a propaganda department, whether at the all-union (see Glossary) 
or at the local level. 

The Government Role 

In the late 1980s, censorship authority was exercised by Glav- 
lit, which employed some 70,000 censors to review information be- 
fore it was disseminated by publishing houses, editorial offices, and 
broadcasting studios. Government censorship organs attended to 
all levels, in the forms of territorial, provincial, municipal, and dis- 
trict organs. No mass medium escaped Glavlit's control. All press 
agencies and radio and television stations had a Glavlit represen- 
tative on their editorial staffs. Although Glavlit was attached to the 
Council of Ministers, many emigres asserted that Glavlit answered 
not only to the Propaganda Department but also to the KGB. 

Although the Ideological Department regulated ideological and 
political censorship, the KGB handled classified information and, 
by extension, controlled Glavlit's "administrative and staffing" 
responsibilities. Many Glavlit censors were former KGB members. 
The KGB and Glavlit worked together to implement a compendi- 
um of regulations contained in the Censor's Index, which contained 
classified information on "state secrets" that could not be revealed 
in the media. Apparently, the index contained between 300 and 
1,000 pages, with periodically updated lists of military, technical, 
economic, statistical, and other data on various people and issues 



374 



Mass Media and the Arts 



forbidden for dissemination. As a result, editors and writers rare- 
ly touched on proscribed material. If they published any unsanc- 
tioned information, the censors either instituted harsher publication 
restrictions or fired those who broke the rules. 

The government also regulated information through the central 
and republic ministries of culture and similar all-union state com- 
mittees and specialized state censors. The ministries of culture 
helped coordinate centralized censorship for Glavlit as well as exe- 
cute other literary controls. Three distinct state committees im- 
plemented censorship policies throughout the country: the State 
Committee for Publishing Houses, Printing Plants, and the Book 
Trade (Gosudarstvennyi komitet po delam izdatel'stv, poligrafii, 
i knizhnoi torgovli — Goskomizdat); the State Committee for Tel- 
evision and Radio Broadcasting (Gosudarstvennyi komitet po 
televideniyu i radio veshchaniyu — Gostelradio); and the State Com- 
mittee for Cinematography (Gosudarstvennyi komitet po kine- 
matografii — Goskino). Furthermore, the dissemination of books 
on cultural, political, military, scientific, technical, economic, and 
social issues fell under the purview of separate government print- 
ing houses. These individual printing houses oversaw the numeri- 
cal distributions of all titles, and they limited access to certain books 
deemed to be related to state security, even if the information was 
unclassified. The publishing houses also regulated the number of 
copies of foreign titles published internally and Soviet titles pub- 
lished for distribution abroad. 

The government censorship hierarchy not only maintained 
comprehensive controls over information distributed by the news 
services worldwide but the official news organs — TASS and 
Novosti — regulated all news wire service information to ensure 
government control of information disseminated to the public. In 
1988 TASS employed about 65,000 professional correspondents 
and journalists. Because TASS operated an extensive number of 
news agencies around the world, in the late 1980s its 2.5 million 
lines reached more than 20,000 subscribers daily. From 20 to 25 
percent of its subscribers were media organizations that depended 
almost entirely on TASS for foreign and domestic reporting. Con- 
sequently, TASS officials, who were located in every republic's cap- 
ital and in nearly all provincial cities, serviced many newspapers, 
some of which allotted nearly 50 percent of their news space to 
TASS-relayed information. 

Created in 1961, Novosti supplemented TASS. Serving as the 
conduit for information that TASS could not accommodate, Novosti 
focused mainly on foreign reporting. By assuming responsibilities 
for feature stories, commentary, interviews, and other articles 



375 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

featuring the best side of Soviet society, Novosti attempted to pro- 
vide its domestic and foreign readership with human interest sto- 
ries in ways TASS could not. Novosti' s correspondents annually 
transmitted almost 50,000 articles. Together, TASS and Novosti 
served as the primary means for distributing Soviet viewpoints 
around the world. 

Procedures for censorship of military and scientific information 
differed from those followed for other kinds of information. Be- 
fore information relating to any aspect of the Soviet military was 
disseminated through the media, the material first had to have been 
approved by the military censor and then by Glavlit. This com- 
plex censorship process began with the first-level editor in Moscow, 
who censored the article and sent a letter detailing the author's back- 
ground and sources used to a military censor. Once it reached the 
military censorship authorities of the General Staff, the material 
had to be sanctioned again before it reached the penultimate 
stage — review by the political-military and KGB editors. Whether 
the information was regional or all-union in scope, the Main Po- 
litical Directorate of the Soviet Army and Navy and the military 
directorate of the KGB reportedly advised, if not instructed, the 
military censors, despite the military censors' official obligations 
to the General Staff. Once these military officers had read and ap- 
proved the article, it went to the Glavlit censors for publication. 
If the military officers had any hesitation about a piece, they had 
the authority to request that the editor discuss with them any aspect 
of the article under question. Soviet sources also have revealed that 
once the Glavlit censors received the edited piece from the mili- 
tary officers, they never questioned the revisions and routinely dis- 
tributed the article to the appropriate media. 

Similar procedures applied to science censors within the Acade- 
my of Sciences (see Glossary), who targeted material related to ' 'na- 
tional defense" in the areas of science and technology. Censors 
specializing in various scientific disciplines concentrated on strip- 
ping any material that could be construed to reveal the regime's 
national security policies. For example, publications and broad- 
casts related to outer space events were examined by the Commis- 
sion on Research and Exploitation of Cosmic Space, associated with 
the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences. 

Other censors concentrated on such topics as radio electronics, 
chemistry, geology, and computer science. The atomic energy cen- 
sors, located at the State Committee for the Utilization of Atomic 
Energy, oversaw materials concentrating on nuclear energy, even 
those that focused on science fiction. After approval by the special- 
ized censors, the works were referred to Glavlit. 



376 



Man posting a copy of 
Pravda, the CPSU newspaper, 
at a sidewalk display in 
Odessa, Ukrainian Republic 
Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 



The Mass Media 

The mass media acted as an instrument of the CPSU, not only 
to control society but also to mobilize it. Lenin and the Bolshevik 
leadership depended on the media to win support for the new re- 
gime. Indeed, without important communications links from the 
party to the people, the Bolsheviks' message would never have been 
broadly disseminated. During the early years, the leadership sought 
to galvanize the population by spreading the party line and encour- 
aging the population to build a strong communist society, exhort- 
ing it through editorials, commentaries, and tributes in newspapers, 
journals, and radio. Over time, television, films, and computers be- 
came essential components of the CPSU's agitprop (see Glossary) 
efforts, as well as of its campaigns to spread Marxist- Leninist values 
among the people. The technological information revolution forced 
the party to reevaluate its efforts to control the masses because 
advances in technology also created the potential for communica- 
tions links outside regime control. For example, with the spread of 
video cassette recorders (VCRs) in the late 1980s, the party leader- 
ship faced the problems created by the underground circulation of 
video tapes, in addition to the circulation of illegal periodicals. 

Newspapers 

In 1988 the regime published more than 8,000 daily newspapers 



377 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

in approximately sixty languages, with a combined circulation of 
about 170 million. Every all-union newspaper was circulated in 
its Russian-language version. Nearly 3,000 newspapers, however, 
reached the population in non-Russian languages. Minority- 
language newspapers constituted roughly 25 percent of the total 
circulation, although non-Russians made up almost 50 percent of 
the population (see Nationalities of the Soviet Union, ch. 4). 

All newspaper reporters and editors belonged to the party- 
controlled Union of Journalists, composed of nearly 74,000 mem- 
bers. In 1988 some 80 percent of the union's reporters and editors 
were party members. Inevitably, assignments of editors had to be 
approved by the party. In the late 1980s, all the central editors in 
chief of major all-union newspapers belonged to the CPSU Cen- 
tral Committee. The party also sought to control journalists by com- 
bining higher education and higher party schools with schools of 
journalism (see Training, ch. 7). Reporters and editors thus were 
trained under the aegis of the professional party elite. For newspaper 
journalists and television and radio reporters, newspaper pho- 
tographers, and literary editors, Moscow University's School of 
Journalism provided a main conduit to party positions concerned 
with the media. In the 1980s, some 2,500 graduate, undergradu- 
ate, evening school, and correspondence students annually gradu- 
ated from the School of Journalism. Students were taught party 
strictures within the following eight departments: theory and prac- 
tice of the party-Soviet press, history of the party-Soviet press, 
television and radio broadcasting, movie-making and editorial- 
publishing work, foreign press and literature, Russian journalism 
and literature, stylistics of the Russian language, and techniques 
of newspaper work and information media. By the late 1980s, 
Moscow University's School of Journalism had graduated approx- 
imately 100,000 journalists. 

Party members supposedly read the all-union newspapers differ- 
ently from their nonparty counterparts. Trained to scan certain 
sections of the paper, party members read with an eye toward in- 
struction and guidance. In contrast to nonparty members, the loyal 
party elite apparently first read any article or editorial related to 
ideology, the Party Rules (see Glossary), or instructions. By con- 
trast, most nonparty members reportedly read the international 
news first, followed by sports, science and culture, and economic 
events before they turned to political or ideological articles, if they 
read articles on these subjects at all. 

In the late 1980s, newspapers gradually developed new formats 
and new issues. Under Andropov, Pravda began to print short 



378 



Mass Media and the Arts 



reports of weekly Politburo meetings. Eventually, other major 
newspapers published accounts of these meetings as well. 

Under Gorbachev, Politburo reports expanded to provide more 
details on the leadership's thinking about domestic and foreign af- 
fairs. Before Gorbachev's assumption of power, Western sources 
had identified a partial list of proscribed topics, which included 
crime, drugs, accidents, natural disasters, occupational injuries, 
official organs of censorship, security, intelligence, schedules of trav- 
el for the political leadership, arms sales abroad, crime or morale 
problems in the armed forces, hostile actions against Soviet citizens 
abroad, and special payments and education for athletes. After 1985 
Gorbachev's policy of glasnost' (see Glossary) gave editors a freer 
hand to publish information on many of these subjects. 

In the 1980s, regional newspapers differed in several ways from 
all-union newspapers. The distribution of regional newspapers 
varied from circulation at the republic level to circulation in a 
province, city, or district. The party allowed many regional 
newspapers to print most of their issues in the region's native lan- 
guage, which reflected the Stalinist policy of "national in form, 
socialist in content." Local newspaper circulation remained res- 
tricted to a region. These publications often focused on such is- 
sues as local heroes who contributed to the good of the community 
or significant problems (as expressed in letters to the editor) relat- 
ing to crime or natural disasters. By contrast, after Gorbachev came 
to power, most all-union newspapers began to report on societal 
shortcomings. However, in the late 1980s regional papers continued 
to contain more personal advertisements and local merchant no- 
tices than the all-union newspapers, if the latter carried any at all. 

Originally, Lenin argued that v criticism should be channeled 
through letters to the editor and would assist in cleansing society 
of its problems. He believed that public discussion would facilitate 
the elimination of shortcomings and that open expression of 
problems would create a significant feedback mechanism for the 
leadership and for the country as a whole. Lenin's ideas in this 
regard were not carried out by Stalin and Khrushchev, who ap- 
parently believed the party needed no assistance from the people 
in identifying problems. But in 1981, Brezhnev created the Cen- 
tral Committee Letters Department, and later Andropov called for 
more letters to editors to expose corruption and mismanagement. 
Chernenko advocated that greater "media efficacy" be instituted 
so that newspapers, for example, would carry more in-depth and 
current analyses on pressing issues. Gorbachev expanded the flex- 
ibility allowed by giving newspapers leeway in publishing letters 
critical of society and even critical of the government. 



379 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Newspaper letters departments usually employed large staffs and 
handled extremely high volumes of letters daily. Not all letters were 
published because they often dealt with censored subjects or their 
numbers simply posed too great a burden for any one newspaper 
to handle. The letters departments, however, reportedly took their 
work very seriously and in the late 1980s were used by the press 
to encourage the population to improve society. 

Letters to editors on a great number of previously forbidden topics 
also elicited responses from the population that could be manipu- 
lated by the Soviet newspapers to influence public opinion in the 
desired direction. Because party members made up the majority 
of active newspaper readers, according to polls conducted in the 
Soviet Union, they wrote most of the letters to the editor. Thus, 
their perspectives probably colored the newspapers' letters sections. 

Of all the newspapers, Pravda (Truth), an organ of the CPSU 
Central Committee, was the most authoritative and, therefore, the 
most important. Frequently, it was the bellwether for important 
events, and readers often followed its news leads to detect changes 
in policies. With about 12 million copies circulated every day to 
over 20 million citizens, Pravda focused on party events and domestic 
and foreign news. 

Other newspapers, however, also commanded wide circulation. 
Izvestiia (News), the second most authoritative paper, emanated 
from the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet and in the late 1980s 
circulated to between 8 and 10 million people daily. Izvestiia also 
contained official government information and general news and 
an expanded Sunday section composed of news analysis, feature 
stories, poetry, and cartoons. Trud (Labor), issued by the Soviet 
labor unions, circulated six days a week, reaching 8 to 9 million 
people. It emphasized labor and economic analyses and included 
other official decrees. Komsomol 'skaia pravda (Komsomol Truth), 
published by the Komsomol (see Glossary), was distributed to be- 
tween 9 and 10 million people. Krasnaia zvezda (Red Star), pub- 
lished by the Ministry of Defense, covered most daily military news 
and events and published military human interest stories and ex- 
poses. The literary bimonthly Literaturnaia gazeta (Literary Gazette) 
disseminated the views of the Union of Writers and contained 
authoritative statements and perspectives concerning literature, 
plays, cinema, and literary issues of popular interest. A publica- 
tion of the Central Committee, Sovetskaia Rossiia (Soviet Russia), 
was the Russian Republic's most widely distributed newspaper, 
with a circulation of nearly 12 million. A weekly regional newspaper, 
Moskovskie novosti (Moscow News), appeared in both Russian and 
English editions and reported on domestic and international events. 



380 



Mass Media and the Arts 



It became very popular during the late 1980s, both in the Soviet 
Union and abroad. The weekly newspaper Za rubezhom (Abroad) 
devoted its pages exclusively to international affairs and foreign 
events. Finally, Sotsialisticheskaia industriia (Socialist Industry), a daily 
newspaper, concentrated on industrial and economic events, statis- 
tics, and human interest stories. 

Magazines and Journals 

In the late 1980s, weekly, monthly, and quarterly magazines and 
journals numbered almost 5,500 and had a circulation nearly equal 
to that of the daily newspapers. The same CPSU regulations and 
guidelines that applied to newspapers extended to magazines and 
journals. In the mid-1980s, under the regime's less-restrictive cen- 
sorship policy, both magazines and journals published articles and 
stories to fill in historical "blank spots." These articles included 
works of past and contemporary authors once banned and new 
works that challenged the limits imposed on literary society by previ- 
ous leaders. Assessments and criticisms of past leaderships exposed 
many historical atrocities, particularly those committed under 
Stalin. As a result, in the late 1980s the number of subscribers to 
periodicals climbed considerably, and magazines and journals fre- 
quently sold out at kiosks within minutes. 

In the late 1980s, these magazines and journals created rever- 
berations throughout society with their publication of controver- 
sial articles. Krokodil (Crocodile), one of the most popular magazines 
with a circulation of approximately 6 million, contained humor and 
satire and featured excellent artistic political cartoons and ideological 
messages. In 1987 Krokodil published a short excerpt from In Search 
of Melancholy Baby by Vasilii Aksionov, an emigre writer and poet 
living in the United States. The piece portrayed Moscow intellec- 
tuals' fascination with American fads during the 1950s and prompt- 
ed many letters to the editor that both praised and criticized the 
excerpt. Nedelia (Week), another magazine, supplemented Izves- 
tiia and appeared every Sunday, having a circulation of some 9 
to 10 million. 

Such journals as Ogonek (Little Fire), a weekly that became more 
popular in the late 1980s because of its insightful political exposes, 
human interest stories, serialized features, and pictorial sections, 
had an audience of over 2 million people. In 1986 it published ex- 
cerpted works by the previously banned writer Nikolai S. Gumilev, 
who was shot in 1921 after being accused of writing a counterrevolu- 
tionary proclamation. In 1988 it also published excerpts of poetry 
from Iulii Daniel, imprisoned after a famous 1966 trial for publi- 
cation of his work abroad. Novyi mir (New World), one of the most 



381 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

controversial and often original literary reviews, attracted 
widespread readership among the intelligentsia. The monthly pub- 
lication reached nearly 2 million readers and concentrated on new 
prose, poetry, criticism, and commentary. Many previously banned 
works were published in its pages, most notably Doctor Zhivago by 
Boris Pasternak. (The publication of Doctor Zhivago in the West not 
only resulted in Pasternak's expulsion from the Union of Writers 
in 1956 but won him the 1958 Nobel Prize for Literature.) Oktiabr' 
(October), a journal resembling Novyi mir in content, circulation, 
and appeal, espoused more conservative viewpoints. Nevertheless, 
Anna Akhmatova's ' 'Requiem," a poetic tribute to those who 
perished during Stalin's purges, appeared in its November 1987 
issue. Finally, Sovetskaia kuVtura (Soviet Culture), a journal with 
broad appeal, published particularly biting indictments of collec- 
tivization, industrialization, and the purges of the 1930s. In 1988 
the journal published articles indirectly criticizing Lenin for sanc- 
tioning the establishment of the system of forced labor and con- 
centration camps. 

Radio 

Like other party-controlled media in the late 1980s, radio broad- 
casts attempted to instill in the population a sense of duty and loyalty 
to the party and state. Every day the government broadcast an es- 
timated 1 ,400 hours of radio programming to all parts of the coun- 
try, often in as many as 70 languages. The main programming 
emanated from Moscow, where eight radio channels broadcast 180 
hours daily to audiences throughout the country. Government 
domination of radio broadcasts was, however, not complete. Since 
the onset of the post-World War II Cold War, government pro- 
grams have competed with broadcasts originating in the West, 
which have been aimed across the country's borders with the in- 
tention of providing independent information to the population, 
particularly on topics that censors desperately tried to ban. The 
government, until 1988, routinely jammed radio broadcasts by 
American- sponsored Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the Voice 
of America, the British Broadcasting Corporation, and Deutsche 
Welle, the broadcast of the Federal Republic of Germany (West 
Germany) Ministry of the Interior. An estimated 2 to 3 million 
citizens regularly listened to these foreign broadcasts when the 
authorities were not jamming them. 

Television and Video Cassette Recorders 

In the 1970s and 1980s, television became the preeminent mass 
medium. In 1988 approximately 75 million households owned 



382 



Television equipment vehicle in Riga, Latvian Republic 

Courtesy Jonathan Tetzlaff 

television sets, and an estimated 93 percent of the population 
watched television. Moscow, the base from which most of the tele- 
vision stations broadcast, transmitted some 90 percent of the coun- 
try's programs, with the help of more than 350 stations and nearly 
1,400 relay facilities. Moscow projected some fifty hours of news, 
commentaries, education, and entertainment every day from its 
four channels. About 20 percent of this programming consisted of 
news, the main program being "Vremia" (Time), a thirty-five- 
to forty-five-minute news program beginning at 9:00 P. M Moscow 
time. Between 80 and 90 percent of all families who owned televi- 
sions followed "Vremia" broadcasts. Normally, about two-thirds 
of reporting on each telecast consisted of domestic affairs, usually 
stories concentrating on the government, the economy, and im- 
portant regional events. International news filled just under one- 
third of the format; three to four minutes were devoted to sports 
and two minutes to weather. Another news program, "Segodnia 
v mire" (Today in the World), which featured foreign affairs reports 
and short but in-depth news analyses, attracted from 60 to 90 mil- 
lion viewers every evening, particularly because it was broadcast 
both in the early evening and in the late evening. 

Countless "firsts" were achieved on Soviet television, begin- 
ning under Andropov and continuing with Gorbachev. During 



383 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Andropov's rule, coverage was given to the downing of the South 
Korean airliner that strayed over Soviet territory in 1983, includ- 
ing a live broadcast featuring several high-level political and mili- 
tary leaders who answered questions from reporters without prior 
submission. With Gorbachev's accession, many live programs were 
broadcast via satellite television bridges (satellite electronic links) 
between the Soviet Union and the United States; footage and com- 
mentary were shown on the war in Afghanistan; the Chernobyl' 
nuclear reactor accident was explored in-depth; the Armenian earth- 
quake was covered; and live interviews, speeches, and debates in- 
volving Gorbachev and other Politburo members were broadcast. 

Almost every television program tried to include an ideological 
theme. Televised propaganda bombarded viewers in many forms; 
themes on the benefits of the economy were especially prevalent. 
Economic series, such as "Construction Sites of the Twelfth Five- 
Year Plan," "Winner in Socialist Emulation," and "How to Put 
Your Heart into Your Work," exhorted viewers to help to improve 
the economy. Patriotic films portrayed Soviet victories during World 
War II, and spy movies depicted the efforts of the country's se- 
curity services to protect it from the "imperialist threat." Other 
programs featured lectures ranging from secondary school class 
instruction to party virtues, nonviolent cartoons for children, some 
game shows highlighting proper social values, and sports compe- 
titions. In an effort to create a larger viewer constituency, Gor- 
bachev took advantage of television's popular appeal by being the 
first leader to use it to reach the population with his speeches and 
public relations campaigns. 

With television, in contrast to radio, where the authorities had 
a difficult time controlling foreign broadcasts, censors could exer- 
cise greater control. Yet, with the dramatic increase in VCRs, un- 
authorized tapes circulated around the major ports and cities. This 
circulation complicated the regime's attempts to control the infor- 
mation revolution. In fact, Western specialists estimated that Soviet 
households contained approximately 300,000 VCRs. The problem 
of control became more acute in the mid-1980s as the policy ofglas- 
nosV led the younger generation to yearn for more information. 

Computers 

After Gorbachev's accession to power, the leadership promul- 
gated a new series of telecommunications and computerization 
goals. Some of those efforts had already been incorporated into the 
Twelfth Five- Year Plan (1986-90). They included a universal im- 
plementation of computers and data bases throughout the economy 
and an all-union computer modernization and training program 



384 



Mass Media and the Arts 



aimed at the younger generation. In 1988 Western estimates put 
the number of computers at 30,000 mainframes and 70,000 smaller 
computers. In 1985 a law requiring ninth and tenth graders to learn 
computer fundamentals was introduced. In the Twelfth Five- Year 
Plan, the leadership declared its goal to furnish high schools with 
at least 500,000 computers by 1990, representing 45 percent of 
national computer production. By the year 2000, the leadership 
projected that 5 million computers would be distributed through- 
out the schools. The Soviet Union developed a copy of the Apple 
II computer (called the Agat) and International Business Machines 
personal computer clones. In addition, the Soviet Union developed 
the Janus with Hungary and the MMS-16 with the German Demo- 
cratic Republic (East Germany). All of these computer models, 
however, encountered production problems. 

Achievements in computer technology may have benefited the 
national economy, especially industry and the military, but they 
also may have imperiled the leadership's ability to control access 
to information. The leadership's control of information was likely 
to be further reduced by a continuing rise in the number of VCRs, 
access to direct-broadcast satellite transmissions, and access to 
Western data networks that managers and scientists desired. Despite 
measures to suppress the dissemination of mass information, the 
regime faced a dilemma. It could not expect to compete with the 
West unless it modernized its technology and improved its com- 
puter facilities, yet it wanted to maintain strict controls over data 
networks and personal computer use. 

The Arts 

Throughout Soviet history, the arts have played an integral role 
in influencing the population. In particular, literature has served 
as the main political instrument through which the leadership has 
regulated cultural currents. As, by Stalin's definition, the "en- 
gineers of human souls," writers were required to bolster policies 
sanctioned by the leadership. All writers, whether or not members 
of the party-controlled Union of Writers, submitted their works 
for party approval. After Stalin's death, writers experienced a brief 
literary thaw when some party constraints lessened. Not until the 
late 1980s, however, did the regime loosen its previously confin- 
ing strictures on literary form and content. 

The regime exercised strict controls over other forms of art as 
well. The leadership's political line dictated the content and form 
of cinema, theater, music, the plastic arts such as painting and sculp- 
ture, and the graphic arts. The party used the cinema screen to 
portray its societal ideals. Directors had to produce films praising 



385 




386 



Theater of Drama and Comedy, Leningrad 
Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 



387 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

the regime and exhorting moral conduct. On the stage, playwrights 
and actors operated within the party's controlled framework under 
which themes had to be approved in advance of a performance. 
Musicians wrote and played only music sanctioned by the regime 
for public performances. Art galleries displayed works approved 
by party officials. In the 1980s, however, artists began to express 
harsh and painful themes in their works, sometimes cutting a fine 
line between permitted and forbidden subjects. In the post-Brezhnev 
period, the government vacillated between imposing more restric- 
tive artistic controls and allowing greater freedom of expression. 
After 1985 the Soviet artistic world experienced a number of con- 
tentious debates about the liberties allowed to artists. 

Literature 

Since the 1930s, the regime has regulated literary expression 
through socialist realism. In spite of the brief literary thaw during 
the late 1950s, throughout the Brezhnev period writers endured 
a reemphasis of Stalinist constraints over their works. Traditional 
ways of thinking and of viewing history no longer applied to many 
parts of literature, however, once Gorbachev assumed power. 

The ferment inspired a creativity not witnessed since Khru- 
shchev's literary thaw. Books began to treat conflicts faced by real 
human beings and to portray critical and poignant topics thereto- 
fore banned. Poets such as Evgenii Evtushenko and Andrei Voz- 
nesenskii, who had receded into the background from the mid-1960s 
to the mid-1980s, were again able to express their desire for a more 
humane society, uncovering the truth about the past and seeking 
greater freedom for the arts. Previously banned themes began to 
appear for the first time since the 1920s. Conservative elements 
persisted in some literary circles, however, and in the late 1980s 
some bans on literary themes remained in effect. 

A limited degree of freer expression on topics dealing with so- 
cietal changes was permitted between Brezhnev's death and Gor- 
bachev's rise to power. For example, in 1983 Andropov allowed 
the publication in book form of Chingiz Aitmatov's, The Day Lasts 
More Than a Hundred Years. In this novel, Aitmatov, a native of the 
Kirgiz Republic, confronts such historical themes as the brutal 
Stalinist period, social and moral turpitude, and nationality ten- 
sions in the Soviet Union. In the novel, he treats tensions between 
Russians and non-Russians from a Central Asian perspective. This 
book, however, stands alone. 

Chernenko reintroduced strict bans on critical and innovative 
works. One example concerns Sergei Zalygin's (editor in chief 
of Novyi mir) novel After the Storm, which appeared shortly after 



388 



Mass Media and the Arts 



Chernenko's death. During Chernenko's rule, the second half of 
the novel had been withheld from publication without explanation. 

Under Gorbachev, literary treatment of such topics as alcohol 
and drug addiction, juvenile delinquency, religious subjects (in- 
cluding references to God), historical reassessments of previous lead- 
ers, and even harsh criticisms of past leaders have been approved, 
provided they contained the prescribed amount of support for the 
regime. Yet in the late 1980s, editors continued to uphold the party 
creed to prevent works containing unsanctioned views from reaching 
the public. In 1988 books almost never contained material on or 
made reference to "anti-Soviet emigres" or defectors, anticom- 
munist foreign literature, pornographic topics, or "underground" 
works — referred to as samizdat (see Glossary) if self-published in 
the country or tamizdat if published abroad. 

Gorbachev's policy of openness also contributed to more lively 
discussions among members of the Union of Writers. Controversy 
erupted at the Eighth Congress of the Union of Writers during the 
summer of 1986, where the majority of speeches centered on hotly 
disputed topics. Speeches by Voznesenskii and Evtushenko criti- 
cized the neglect shown by the regime toward some of the Soviet 
Union's most talented writers, and they advocated support for pub- 
lication of their works. Thus, by 1988 the journal Novyi mir had 
published Pasternak's novel Doctor Zhivago in four installments. In 
addition, at Voznesenskii 's behest, the Union of Writers approved 
the selection of such nondelegates as the famous poet Bella Akh- 
madulina, the writer and balladeer Bulat Okudzhava, and the fire- 
brand writer Iurii Chernichenko to membership on the union's 
administrative board. Finally, the writers' congress witnessed the 
changing of the guard as Vladimir Karpov, a survivor of Stalinist 
labor camps, replaced the conservative Georgii Markov as first 
secretary of the Union of Writers. 

At the congress, ethnic confrontations also arose between Rus- 
sian and non-Russian authors; opposition was voiced against bu- 
reaucratic publishing roadblocks; and vehement demands were 
made favoring a reevaluation of Soviet history. Conservative views, 
however, also appeared. Sergei Mikhalkov, the first secretary of 
the Russian Republic's writers' union and a declared opponent 
of Gorbachev's openness policy, cautioned against "parasites" who 
lack a direct relation to literature and others who espouse overly 
liberal views. In addition, Nikolai Gribachev, a conservative writer, 
advocated a return to "classic Soviet writers," especially Maksim 
Gor'kiy, associated with "proletarian populism," and Aleksei N. 
Tolstoi, a supporter of "Russian nationalism." The conservatives 
highlighted the importance of nationalism and the legacy of socialist 



389 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

realism's emphasis on the " positive hero." Nationalistic defenses 
prompted another conservative writer, Aleksandr Prokhanov, to 
criticize the emergence of the "new social type" of individual in 
literature, an ideologically apathetic citizen overly sympathetic to 
the West. 

Nevertheless, at the Eighth Congress of the Union of Writers, 
the liberals gained ground and secured a number of dramatic 
changes. After much lobbying by prominent writers and poets, in- 
cluding Evtushenko and Voznesenskii, the liberal and conserva- 
tive elements of the writers' union reached agreement in mid- 1988 
to turn Peredelkino, Pasternak's former home, into an official 
museum. The Eighth Congress also served as a harbinger for loosen- 
ing the censorship restrictions on the publication of several politi- 
cally charged novels. Among these works were Anatolii Rybakov's 
penetrating Children of the Arbat, which offered insights into the ori- 
gins of Stalinism, and Vasilii Grossman's Life and Fate, which drew 
historical comparison between Stalinism and Nazism. The late 1980s 
ushered in the way for poet Tat'iana Tolstaia, the granddaughter 
of the Soviet writer Aleksei Tolstoi (1882-1945), to publish. Known 
for her dramatic realism about death in ordinary people's lives, Tol- 
staia saw her publications appear in Oktiabr' and Novyi mir and won 
great acclaim, even though the Union of Writers continued to ex- 
clude her. 

Cinema 

A long tradition of classic and monumental films created by film 
makers such as Sergei Eisenstein served the regime's intent of por- 
traying a strong socialist society (see Society and Culture in the 
1920s, ch. 2). The party dictated the themes and issues that Soviet 
film makers would depict. 

In the late 1980s, the film industry underwent dramatic changes 
as the CPSU allowed film makers to analyze social dilemmas and 
propose remedies. From 1986 to 1988, three important develop- 
ments occurred within the film-making leadership. First, film mak- 
ers banded together to remove conservative bureaucrats from the 
Union of Cinematographers and to replace them with younger, 
bolder, and more innovative directors. Second, these changes led 
to the formation of the Disputes Committee within the union headed 
by an important, more open-minded Pravda critic in order to 
examine approximately sixty films that had been "withheld" 
without any proper justification. Among these prohibited films were 
three directed by the new head of the Union of Cinematographers, 
Elem Klimov. Third, the official state organ controlling cinema, 
Goskino, was forced to yield to an ever-increasing number of union 



390 



Home of poet and 
novelist Boris Pasternak, 
southwest of 
Moscow in the 
writers' colony at 
Peredelhino 
Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 



demands for greater cinematic freedom. Previously, film makers 
who wanted to produce films were required to please Goskino and 
the censors. Box office success was unimportant. In the late 1980s, 
film makers won the right to have their films judged on their merits. 
As a result, success for film makers meant producing money-making 
ventures. They no longer required the full professional and finan- 
cial support of Goskino. 

The CPSU Central Committee also reduced the power and 
influence of the Ministry of Culture's Glavrepertkom (see Glos- 
sary), the official film-release control apparatus. By the end of 1986, 
many previously banned or withheld films were showing in movie 
theaters. Yet as of 1988, Glavrepertkom continued to wield sub- 
stantial censorship influence, with its reach extending to theaters, 
circuses, concerts, phonograph records, and general musical produc- 
tions. 

One of the most adventuresome film makers was a seasoned film 
professional, Iulii Raizman. Born in 1903, Raizman survived many 
tribulations during the oppressive eras of Soviet film making. He 
poignantly explored such themes as family trauma, societal im- 
morality, materialism and corruption, and economic deprivation. 
His Private Life (1982) explores the ordeals of a factory manager 
who, when forced into retirement, realizes that he has sacrificed 
time with his family. A Time of Wishes (1984) examines how women 



391 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



endure their inferior lot in society. Raizman has gained such re- 
nown, particularly as head of Mosfilm studios in Moscow, that he 
has been able to initiate the production of progressive films and 
has supported efforts of younger, aspiring, and creative film mak- 
ers to voice their concerns through their works. 

The relaxation of controls over film making has also permitted 
the release of numerous films that had been restricted for many 
years. Four such prominent films released were Klimov's Agoniia 
and Come and See, Aleksei German's My Friend Ivan Lapshin, and 
Tengiz Abuladze's Repentance. Known in the West as Rasputin, 
Klimov's Agoniia presents a more balanced view of Tsar Nicholas 
II than that historically taught in the school systems, and it also 
contains religious overtones. The film maintains an unusual silence 
regarding the Bolshevik Revolution. Klimov completed Agoniia in 
1975, but it was not released until 1985. In Come and See, Klimov 
captures the horrors of war from a typical Soviet perspective, that 
of destruction symbolized not only by the Nazi genocide but also 
by the premonition of nuclear holocaust. 

The other two films deal with some of the horrors of the Stalin 
period. German's My Friend Ivan Lapshin, which required three years 
for approval after it had been completed, contains an investiga- 
tion said to depict innocent people being persecuted during Sta- 
lin's reign of terror. Abuladze's Repentance created a stir throughout 
the Soviet Union as well as the outside world. Written in 1982, 
produced in 1984, and approved for public viewing in 1987, Repen- 
tance concentrates on the crimes of the Stalin era and the evil in- 
volved in the arrests of innocent people, some of whom were later 
executed. The dictator portrayed supposedly is based on a num- 
ber of evil men in recent history, the most important of whom are 
Stalin and his secret police chief, Lavrenty Beria. Echoes of Adolf 
Hitler and Benito Mussolini are also evident in the dictator's ap- 
pearance. Not only was the film viewed as an overt attack on 
Stalinism but it also was intended to shock Soviet citizens and raise 
their political consciousness to prevent a recurrence of these hor- 
rors. Evtushenko has likened the film to "the cultural event of Gor- 
bachev's cultural thaw, just as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's One Day 
in the Life of Ivan Denisovich represented the spiritual acme of the 
Khrushchev era." As Gorbachev stressed in a speech on the seven- 
tieth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution in a 1987 Central 
Committee plenum, such films are more openly watched in a so- 
ciety encouraged to reassess itself and ensure that "no forgotten 
names and no blank pages ... of the years of industrialization and 
collectivization" be left untouched. 



392 



n 



Taganka Theater, Moscow. The Taganka was founded in 1964 by the 
director Iurii Liubimov; Vladimir Vysotskii performed here 

until his death in 1980. 
Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 



Theater 

Soviet citizens have a rich cultural heritage in theater. Two of 
the most internationally famous theaters, Moscow's Bolshoi Theater 
and Leningrad's Kirov Theater, attracted both domestic and for- 
eign audiences with striking performances in huge, ornate, and 
festive halls. The performers who played to sold-out performances 
in these theaters and who adhered to the regime's acting and direct- 
ing guidelines received speciarbenefits such as worldwide travel, 
luxurious apartments, and the highest state honors for their artis- 
tic contributions. Those artists, however, who chose to portray views 
opposed to the regime's artistic standards experienced shame and 
denunciation, even though audiences often admired them. 

Such an artist was Vladimir Vysotskii. In his short lifetime, 
Vysotskii attracted widespread popularity but railed against a sys- 
tem he opposed. Although he died in 1980 of a heart attack, ap- 
parently the result of alcoholism, Vysotskii' s mass appeal became 
in many ways more pervasive after his death. His memory evolved 
into a veritable cult, with thousands of people mourning the anni- 
versaries of his death by filing past his burial place. This balladeer 



393 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

and actor, who for years played such famous roles as Hamlet un- 
der the tutelage of Taganka Theater director Iurii Liubimov, raised 
the avant-garde theater to a cultural pinnacle in Moscow by at- 
tracting thousands of followers, even for unannounced or unpub- 
licized programs that featured his protests, often against the 
leadership's failings. His poetry and music, once banned in the 
Soviet Union, have been disseminated throughout the country and 
depict bureaucratic corruption, elitism, poverty, war, and prison 
camp horror. In the late 1980s, Vysotskii's mentor, Liubimov, con- 
tinued to leave an indelible mark on the theater, even after his forced 
exile by the authorities and the bans on his productions. He lived 
abroad and continued to produce masterpieces adapted from Gor'- 
kiy's novel Mother, Bertold Brecht's play The Good Woman qfSzechuan, 
Mikhail Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita, and Fedor 
Dostoevskii's novel Crime and Punishment, making him the greatest 
Soviet theatrical director. The Taganka Theater performed without 
him, but the stage did not retain the same popularity. Under Gor- 
bachev, Liubimov was allowed back to his homeland to direct his 
version of the opera Boris Godunov, banned in 1983 when he was 
forced to leave the Soviet Union. However, Liubimov remained 
only long enough to oversee the project's completion and left of 
his own accord, preferring to live abroad. 

After 1985 a degree of liberalization similar to that permitted 
for literature and cinema prevailed for the stage. In 1985 and 1986, 
approximately 10 percent of the directors were replaced in favor 
of younger and more innovative directors, who, in turn, opened 
the door to more creative playwrights. In addition, theater groups 
(collectives) gained "full independence in the selection of plays," 
releasing them in some measure from the onus of the regime's 
authoritarian and arbitrary decisions. As a result of these changes, 
playwrights such as Mikhail Shatrov blossomed within the freer 
theater environment. In 1986 his "neo- Leninist" work Dictator- 
ship of Conscience, which portrayed Stalin and Brezhnev as shady 
and sometimes unfaithful communists, played to receptive audiences. 
Shatrov' s other prominent play from the 1987-88 period, . . . Fur- 
ther . . . Further, and Further/, offered a scathing indictment of the 
Stalin period, this time concentrating on Lenin's legacy and the way 
Stalin manipulated the other Bolshevik leaders during the 1920s in 
his successful effort to defeat them. Shatrov captured the characters 
of many early revolutionary leaders, using strong dialogue to depict 
vivid conflicts. 

Music 

The Soviet Union has produced some of the world's foremost 



394 



composers and musicians. The authorities, however, have sought 
to control their music as well as their performances. As a result, 
composers struggled to produce their works under strict limitations. 
Some artists emigrated, but their works endured and continued 
to attract large audiences when performed. 

Restrictions on what musicians played and where they performed 
often caused artists to leave the country either of their own accord 
or through forced exile. Great composers and musicians such as 
Dmitrii Shostakovich, Mstislav Rostropovich, and Vladimir Fel'ts- 
man were persecuted, and some ultimately emigrated. In 1986, 
however, Moscow and Leningrad audiences were privileged to hear 
several memorable performances by the brilliant pianist Vladimir 
Horowitz, who left the Soviet Union in 1925 and who previously 
had not been allowed to reenter the country. A composer who decid- 
ed to remain in the Soviet Union was Alfred Schnittke, acclaimed 
as the best Soviet composer since Shostakovich and a formidable 
technician of surrealist expression. Although at times he was re- 
stricted by the authorities to -presenting unoriginal and party-line 
works, Schnittke attracted both avant-garde and mainstream au- 
diences because of his original, deeply spiritual, and often mysti- 
cal compositions. When not confined by the regime to recording 
certain compositions, Schnittke created such masterpieces as (K)ein 
Sommernachtstraum, Concerto No. 4 for Violin and Orchestra, 



395 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Concerto Grosso No. 1, and Concerto Grosso No. 2, which ap- 
pealed to audiences around the world. 

In addition to classical music, jazz endured and survived the offi- 
cial denunciations the government had cast upon it over the years. 
The regime distrusted this form of music because it had originat- 
ed in the United States and because its essence was improvisation. 
As a symbol of artistic freedom and individual expression, jazz was 
difficult to control. In the late 1960s and 1970s, jazz was one of 
the most popular forms of music in the Soviet Union. Such famous 
jazz artists as Vadim Mustafa-Zadek and Aleksei Kozlov became 
music idols to a generation of jazz lovers. In the late 1980s, however, 
the popularity of jazz declined because of the emergence of rock 
and roll. 

The rhythms and sounds of rock and roll appealed mainly to 
the young. In the 1980s, the popularity of the once leading rock 
bands Winds of Change and The Time Machine faded in favor 
of younger groups. Leningrad rock groups such as Boris Greben- 
shchikov's band Aquarium and the group Avia, which incor- 
porated slogans, speeches, loud sounds, unorthodox mixtures of 
instruments, and screams, provided an important outlet for youth. 
Some of their music supported themes along the lines of Gor- 
bachev's policies, expressing a desire for change in society. Rock- 
and-roll lyrics sometimes exceeded the boundaries of the politically 
permissible. Yet, the leadership realized that this music could not 
be eliminated or even censored for long because it not only ap- 
pealed to many citizens but also could help disseminate the leader- 
ship's policies. 

For many youth, rock and roll served as a means to live out 
dreams and desires that might not be possible in daily life. Aspir- 
ing rock or popular musicians expressed themselves publicly in the 
more open political environment during the late 1980s. In that peri- 
od, Moscow and Leningrad permitted performances of music by 
punki (punk fans) and metallisti (heavy metal fans), whose loud, rau- 
cous music appealed to alienated and rebellious youth. Most rock 
music, however, portrayed the artist as explorer and expressed the 
desire for new styles and forms. 

Painting, Sculpture, and the Graphic Arts 

Moscow and Leningrad housed the two most popular art muse- 
ums in the Soviet Union, the Tret'iakov Gallery and the Hermitage 
Museum, respectively. The Tret'iakov contained medieval and 
modern Russian masterpieces; the Hermitage's collection of Im- 
pressionist painters was one of the best in the world. 



396 



Mass Media and the Arts 



Until the mid-1980s, avant-garde expression appeared not in state 
museums but within the confines of the basement galleries on 
Moscow's Malaia Gruzinskaia street. Displays of overtly religious, 
surrealist, or semiabstract works began in 1978. The artists who 
created such works became an integral part of the cultural life of 
Moscow, as their art directly contrasted with socialist realism. These 
"survivalists" withstood pressure from the official unions and 
prospered through domestic and foreign patronage from established 
cultural figures, influential higher officials, scientists, and diplomats. 

Nonconformist artists created attention both at home and abroad 
in the late 1980s. Former underground artists, such as Il'ia Kabakov 
and Vladimir Iankilevskii, were permitted to display their works 
in the late 1980s, and they captured viewers' imagination with harsh 
criticism of the Soviet system. Paintings by such artists as Vadim 
Sacharov and Nikolai Belianiv, linoleum graphic works by Dshamil 
Mufid-Zade and Maya Tabaka, wood engravings by Dmitrii Bisti, 
and sculpture by Dmitrii Shilinski depicted society as gray, drab, 
harsh, and colorless. Their works indicted industrialization, the 
Great Terror (see Glossary), the annexation of Estonia, Latvia, 
and Lithuania, and the polluted environment. 

Gorbachev based much of his policies' success on the new con- 
tent of artistic expression appearing throughout the Soviet Union. 
By opening up cultural life and enabling mass media representa- 
tives and artists to speak more honestly, the leadership attempted 
to win the support of the intelligentsia for its policies. In the late 
1980s, the leadership loosened the strictures of socialist realism to 
enrich the cultural vitality of society, although censorship laws still 
prevented much information from reaching the public. Although 
strictures were relaxed, the principle of party control remained in 
force. 

* * * 

Many works offer insights into Soviet mass media and culture. 
For a good overview of the mass media and descriptions of the cen- 
sorship institutions, the following sources are particularly helpful: 
Frederick C. Barghoorn and Thomas F. Remington's Politics in 
the USSR; Jane Leftwich Curry and Joan R. Dassin's Press Control 
Around the World; Vadim Medish's The Soviet Union; Lilita Dzir- 
kals, Thane Gustafson, and A. Ross Johnson's "The Media and 
Intra- Elite Communication in the USSR"; and Ellen Mickiewicz's 
Media and the Russian Public. More specialized works concentrating 
on media and culture include Maurice Friedberg's Russian Culture 
in the 1980s; Martin Ebon's The Soviet Propaganda Machine; Ellen 



397 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Mickiewicz's ''Political Communication and the Soviet Media 
System"; Wilson P. Dizard and Blake S. Swensrud's Gorbachev's 
Information Revolution; Valery S. Golovskoy and John Rimberg's 
Behind the Soviet Screen; and S. Frederick Starr's Red and Hot. (For 
further information and complete citations, see Bibliography.) 



398 



Chapter 10. Foreign Policy 



Ronald W. Reagan and Mikhail S. Gorbachev 



Once a pariah denied diplomatic recognition 

by most countries, the Soviet Union had official relations with the 
majority of the nations of the world by the late 1980s. The Soviet 
Union also had progressed from being an outsider in internation- 
al organizations and negotiations to being one of the arbiters of 
Europe's fate after World War II. In the 1970s, after the Soviet 
Union achieved rough nuclear parity with the United States, it per- 
ceived its own involvement as essential to the solution of any major 
international problem. The Soviet Union's effort to extend its in- 
fluence or control over many states and peoples has resulted in the 
formation of a world socialist system (see Glossary) of states whose 
citizens included some one-fourth of humanity. In addition, since 
the early 1970s the Soviet Union has concluded friendship and 
cooperation treaties with a number of Third World states. For all 
these reasons, Soviet foreign policy is of major importance to the 
noncommunist world and helps determine the tenor of international 
relations. 

Although myriad bureaucracies have been involved in the for- 
mation and execution of Soviet foreign policy, the major policy 
guidelines have been determined by the Politburo of the Communist 
Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). The foremost objectives of 
Soviet foreign policy have been the maintenance and enhancement 
of national security and the maintenance of hegemony over Eastern 
Europe. Relations with the United States and Western Europe have 
also been of major concern to Soviet foreign policy makers, and 
relations with individual Third World states have been at least partly 
determined by the proximity of each state to the Soviet border and 
to Soviet estimates of its strategic significance. Despite domestic 
economic problems, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who became general 
secretary in 1985, has emphasized increased Soviet participation 
in international organizations and negotiations, the pursuit of arms 
control and other international agreements, and the reinvigora- 
tion of diplomatic, political, cultural, and scientific initiatives in 
virtually every region of the world. 

Ideology and Objectives 

According to Soviet theorists, the basic character of Soviet for- 
eign policy was set forth in Vladimir I. Lenin's Decree on Peace, 
adopted by the Second Congress of Soviets in November 1917. It 
set forth the dual nature of Soviet foreign policy, which encompasses 



401 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

both proletarian internationalism and peaceful coexistence. On the 
one hand, proletarian internationalism refers to the common cause 
of the working classes of all countries in struggling to overthrow 
the bourgeoisie and to establish communist regimes. Peaceful coex- 
istence, on the other hand, refers to measures to ensure relatively 
peaceful government-to- government relations with capitalist states. 
Both policies can be pursued simultaneously: "Peaceful coexistence 
does not rule out but presupposes determined opposition to im- 
perialist aggression and support for peoples defending their revolu- 
tionary gains or fighting foreign oppression." 

The Soviet commitment in practice to proletarian internation- 
alism has declined since the founding of the Soviet state, although 
this component of ideology still has some effect on current formu- 
lation and execution of Soviet foreign policy. Although pragmatic 
raisons d'etat undoubtedly accounted for much of contemporary 
Soviet foreign policy, the ideology of class struggle (see Glossary) 
still played a role in providing a worldview and certain loose guide- 
lines for action in the 1980s. Marxist-Leninist (see Glossary) ideol- 
ogy reinforces other characteristics of political culture that create 
an attitude of competition and conflict with other states. 

The general foreign policy goals of the Soviet Union were for- 
malized in a party program (see Glossary) ratified by delegates to 
the Twenty- Seventh Party Congress in February-March 1986. 
According to the program, "the main goals and guidelines of the 
CPSU's international policy" included ensuring favorable ex- 
ternal conditions conducive to building communism in the Soviet 
Union; eliminating the threat of world war; disarmament; strength- 
ening the "world socialist system"; developing "equal and friendly" 
relations with "liberated" [Third World] countries; peaceful co- 
existence with the capitalist countries; and solidarity with communist 
and revolutionary-democratic parties, the international workers' 
movement, and national liberation struggles. 

Although these general foreign policy goals were apparently con- 
ceived in terms of priorities, the emphasis and ranking of the pri- 
orities have changed over time in response to domestic and 
international stimuli. After Gorbachev assumed power in 1985, 
for instance, some Western analysts discerned in the ranking of 
priorities a possible de-emphasis of Soviet support for national liber- 
ation movements. Although the emphasis and ranking of priori- 
ties were subject to change, two basic goals of Soviet foreign policy 
remained constant: national security (safeguarding CPSU rule 
through internal control and the maintenance of adequate mili- 
tary forces) and, since the late 1940s, influence over Eastern Europe. 



402 



Foreign Policy 



Many Western analysts have examined the way Soviet behavior 
in various regions and countries supports the general goals of Soviet 
foreign policy. These analysts have assessed Soviet behavior in the 
1970s and 1980s as placing primary emphasis on relations with the 
United States, which is considered the foremost threat to the na- 
tional security of the Soviet Union. Second priority was given to 
relations with Eastern Europe (the European members of the War- 
saw Pact — see Appendix B) and Western Europe (the European 
members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization — NATO). 
Third priority was given to the littoral or propinquitous states along 
the southern border of the Soviet Union: Turkey (a NATO mem- 
ber), Iran, Afghanistan, China, Mongolia, the Democratic Peo- 
ple's Republic of Korea (North Korea), and Japan. Regions near 
to, but not bordering, the Soviet Union were assigned fourth pri- 
ority. These included the Middle East and North Africa, South 
Asia, and Southeast Asia. Last priority was given to sub-Saharan 
Africa, the islands in the Pacific and Indian oceans, and Latin 
America, except insofar as these regions either provided opportu- 
nities for strategic basing or bordered on strategic naval straits or 
sea lanes. In general, Soviet foreign policy was most concerned 
with superpower relations (and, more broadly, relations between 
the members of NATO and the Warsaw Pact), but during the 1980s 
Soviet leaders pursued improved relations with all regions of the 
world as part of its foreign policy objectives (see fig. 14). 

Foreign Policy Making and Execution 
The Foreign Policy Makers 

The predominant Soviet foreign policy actor has been the general 
secretary of the CPSU. The dominant decision-making body has 
been the Politburo (see Politburo; Secretariat, ch. 7). Although the 
general secretary is only one of several members of the Politburo, 
his positions as head of the Secretariat and the Defense Council 
(see Glossary) gave him preeminence in the Politburo. 

Other members of the Politburo also have had major foreign 
policy-making responsibilities, most notably the ministers of for- 
eign affairs and defense, the chairman of the Committee for State 
Security (Komitet gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti — KGB), and the 
chief of the CPSU's International Department. The minister of 
defense and the minister of foreign affairs had been full or candi- 
date members of the Politburo intermittently since 1917. The chair- 
man of the KGB became a candidate member of the Politburo in 
1967 and has generally been a full member since then. The chief 



403 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

of the International Department became a candidate member of 
the Politburo in 1972 but from 1986 to 1988 held only Secretariat 
membership. Since late 1988, he has been a candidate, then full 
member of the Central Committee. Even when foreign policy or- 
ganizations were not directly represented on the Politburo, they 
were nonetheless supervised by Politburo members. 

It is incorrect to say that there are no policy differences within 
the Politburo or no policy inputs or alterations of policy by other 
foreign policy actors. One Western theory holds that foreign poli- 
cy innovation occurs when a new general secretary consolidates 
his power and is able to implement his policy agenda. It is also 
apparent that the foreign and domestic environments affect the for- 
mulation and execution of Soviet foreign policy. According to some 
Western theorists, for instance, Soviet opportunism in the Third 
World in the 1970s owed something to American preoccupation 
with domestic concerns following the end of the war in Vietnam 
and the Watergate scandal. Similarly, the "Reagan Doctrine" of 
assisting anticommunist insurgencies has been suggested by some 
Western analysts as contributing to Soviet reassessment of the long- 
term viability of some Third World revolutionary democratic 
regimes. The extent to which human, economic, and military re- 
sources are available for diplomatic, foreign aid, and military ac- 
tivities also affects Soviet foreign policy. It is nevertheless true that 
the centralization of foreign policy decision making in the Polit- 
buro and the longevity of its members (a major factor in the Polit- 
buro's lengthy institutional memory) both have contributed to the 
Soviet Union's ability to plan foreign policy and guide its long- 
term implementation with a relative singleness of purpose lacking 
in pluralistic political systems. 

Departments of the Central Committee 

Several departments of the Central Committee had some respon- 
sibility for foreign policy in the 1980s, including the International 
Department and the Propaganda Department, which was absorbed 
by the Ideological Department in 1988. Until late 1988, when the 
departments were reorganized, the Liaison with Communist and 
Workers' Parties of Socialist Countries Department and the Cadres 
Abroad Department also had foreign policy responsibilities. These 
two departments, originally part of the International Department, 
were apparently reincorporated into the revamped International 
Department. From 1978 to 1986, there existed another department 
involved in foreign policy execution, the International Informa- 
tion Department. 



404 




Source: Based on information from United States, Department of Defense, Soviet Military Power, Washir 



Figure 14. Soviet Foreign Relations Worldwide, 1988 



Foreign Policy 



The International Department, created in 1943 essentially to 
carry out functions previously performed by the Third Communist 
International (Comintern — see Glossary), was responsible for 
CPSU relations with nonruling communist parties in other states. 
Under Boris Ponomarev, chief of the International Department 
from 1955 to 1986, the International Department focused mainly 
on CPSU relations with Third World communist and radical par- 
ties, but under Anatolii Dobrynin, appointed chief in 1986, the 
focus included overall party and state relations with developed West- 
ern states. In late 1988, Valentin A. Falin, an expert on Western 
Europe and a professional propagandist, was appointed chief. 

The International Department, in focusing on party- to-party re- 
lations, had traditionally been involved in supplying various 
resources to the nonruling parties. These included funds, propagan- 
da, and training. The International Department also had received 
international delegations from communist and leftist groups while 
the Soviet government was maintaining correct relations with the 
home government in power. Finally, the International Department 
acquired international support for Soviet foreign policy through 
extensive use of international front groups, such as the World Peace 
Council and the Afro- Asian People's Solidarity Organization, which 
were funded and controlled through Soviet parent organizations. 

In late 1988, two other departments dealing with foreign policy 
were reincorporated into the International Department. The Liaison 
Department, created in 1957 as a spin-off from the International 
Department, had responsibility for CPSU relations with ruling com- 
munist parties in Bulgaria, Cambodia, China, Cuba, Czechoslova- 
kia, the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), Hungary, 
Romania, Vietnam, and Yugoslavia. The Cadres Abroad Depart- 
ment, created in 1950, approved foreign travel of virtually all Soviet 
citizens, except for tourists visiting the Warsaw Pact states and mili- 
tary personnel. 

The International Information Department, disestablished in 
1980, had been created by Leonid I. Brezhnev to consolidate and 
improve upon propaganda efforts undertaken by the Internation- 
al Department, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Propaganda 
Department. It regularly held press briefings for foreign media per- 
sonnel in Moscow. Its functions were reabsorbed by the Interna- 
tional Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Propaganda 
Department; the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reassumed responsi- 
bility for press briefings on major policy issues. 

Higher State and Government Organizations 

In accordance with the 1977 Constitution and the amendments 



407 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

and additions promulgated in December 1988, several organiza- 
tions were involved in the formation of foreign policy, including 
the Congress of People's Deputies, the Supreme Soviet, the Presidi- 
um of the Supreme Soviet, and the Council of Ministers. This in- 
fluence was primarily a result of the membership of high-ranking 
CPSU officials in these bodies, which had a limited ability to select 
and interpret information passed on to the party leadership. 

The Congress of People's Deputies and the Supreme Soviet 

The changes to the Constitution adopted in December 1988 al- 
tered the character of the Soviet legislative system (see Supreme 
Soviet, ch. 8). The changes invested the Congress of People's 
Deputies with "defining the basic guidelines" of foreign policy and 
expressly assigned foreign policy duties to the newly created posi- 
tion of chairman of the Supreme Soviet. The role of the Supreme 
Soviet in formulating and overseeing the execution of foreign policy 
was theoretically strengthened by providing for lengthy (six- to eight- 
month) yearly sittings of the Supreme Soviet. The duties assigned 
to the Supreme Soviet included forming the Defense Council, ap- 
pointing the senior commanders of the armed forces, ratifying 
international treaties, proclaiming a state of war, and making de- 
cisions on the use of troops abroad. This latter provision was 
added to the list of duties of the Supreme Soviet, as explained by 
Gorbachev and other leaders, because of the closed nature of the 
decision process that led to committing troops to the invasion of 
Afghanistan. The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet was assigned 
responsibility for minor diplomatic functions and declaring war in 
periods when the Supreme Soviet was not in session. The chair- 
man of the Supreme Soviet was to represent the Soviet Union in 
foreign relations with other states. He was also to submit reports 
on foreign policy to the Congress of People's Deputies and the 
Supreme Soviet, head the Defense Council, and negotiate and sign 
international treaties. A Foreign Affairs Committee was also set 
up and its members empowered to formulate and oversee foreign 
policy execution. The new legislative structures apparently provided 
for greater legislative oversight of foreign policy execution and even 
for some input into the foreign policy formulation process, with 
the chairman and the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet playing 
a guiding role in foreign policy activities. 

The Council of Ministers and Its Presidium 

The Presidium of the Council of Ministers also had foreign policy 
duties in its role as head of the executive branch of the govern- 
ment. The 1977 Constitution specified that the Council of Ministers 



408 



Foreign Policy 



be elected at a joint session of the Supreme Soviet and be constitu- 
tionally accountable to the Supreme Soviet (see Administrative Or- 
gans, ch. 8). The foreign policy duties of the Council of Ministers 
were not specified in the 1977 Constitution, beyond a general state- 
ment that the council was to "provide general direction in regard 
to relations with other states, foreign trade, and economic, scien- 
tific, technical, and cultural cooperation of the Soviet Union with 
other countries; take measures to ensure fulfillment of the Soviet 
Union's international treaties; and ratify and repudiate interna- 
tional agreements." These duties were carried out by the various 
ministries and state committees involved in the execution of for- 
eign policy. The chairman of the Presidium of the Council of 
Ministers, as head of government, met with foreign delegations 
and signed international trade and economic agreements. 

In 1989 three ministries and a committee had foreign policy 
responsibilities: the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (diplomatic rela- 
tions), the Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations (trade and arms 
transfers), the Ministry of Defense (military advisory assistance, 
use and display of military power abroad, and covert activities 
through the Main Intelligence Directorate — see Glossary), and the 
KGB (covert activities through the First Chief Directorate). Many 
other ministries and state committees and government agencies also 
had a role in foreign policy execution. These ranged from the Soviet 
Copyright Agency, which approved foreign requests for reproduc- 
tion and translation of Soviet media materials, to the State Com- 
mittee for Foreign Tourism, of which Inturist was a part. 

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs 

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs had responsibility for administer- 
ing the diplomatic relations of the Soviet Union. Once the Coun- 
cil of Ministers had approved diplomatic recognition of a state, the 
Ministry of Foreign Affairs would establish embassies and con- 
sulates, provide the core staffs serving abroad, and serve as a 
conduit for formal communications between the Soviet political 
leadership and the host state. A Soviet ambassador serving abroad 
would be regarded under international law as the personal represen- 
tative of the chairman of the Supreme Soviet to the head of govern- 
ment of the host state. In practice, the Soviet diplomatic service 
carried out CPSU policy as set forth by the general secretary and 
the Politburo. 

The Bolshevik Revolution (see Glossary) of 1917 resulted in a 
virtually complete break in diplomatic staffing from the tsarist period 
because the majority of tsarist diplomatic personnel refused to work 
for the Bolsheviks. Another discontinuity in staffing occurred in 



409 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

the late 1930s, when the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs 
(known after 1946 as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) was purged 
and the resulting vacancies filled by young, professionally trained 
and politically reliable personnel such as Andrei Gromyko. The 
ministry experienced continuity in personnel and structure through- 
out Gromyko 's tenure as minister (1957-85). Eduard Shevardnadze, 
who succeeded Gromyko as foreign minister in 1985, reorganized 
the ministry and made major personnel changes among the Col- 
legium members and ambassadors. 

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs was organized into geographi- 
cal and functional departments and administrations reflecting Soviet 
ideological and pragmatic concerns with various geographical 
regions or world problems. Departments and administrations of 
the ministry included geographical ones, dealing with the regions 
of Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa, and functional ones, 
dealing with such concerns as international organizations and 
cultural affairs. Shevardnadze restructured some of the geograph- 
ical and functional departments, mainly by grouping countries 
into categories reflecting modern world realities. For example, he 
grouped communist countries into Asian and European depart- 
ments, put the member states of the Association of Southeast Asian 
Nations into a single department, and created another African office 
consisting almost entirely of the "frondine states" proximal to South 
Africa. 

Instruments of Influence 

The Soviet Union interacted with other countries in a variety 
of ways, including diplomacy, arms transfers, state and govern- 
ment visits, use of communist parties abroad, front organizations, 
trade and aid, and educational exchanges. To achieve its general 
and regional foreign policy objectives, the Soviet Union made great 
efforts to sustain and increase relations over time. The Soviet phys- 
ical and material presence in a state (which could be quantified 
by numbers of military and economic advisers and the amount of 
economic and military assistance) had traditionally been one indi- 
cator that, along with information about internal decision mak- 
ing, allowed Western analysts to theorize about the degree of Soviet 
influence on a particular state's foreign policy. 

Diplomatic Relations 

The Soviet Union perceived two basic forms of diplomacy: 
"bourgeois diplomacy" as developed by the European states, with 
its emphasis on state-to-state relations; and communist diplomacy 
of a ' 'new type" among the ruling communist and socialist-oriented 



410 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

regimes. Communist diplomacy emphasizes "equal, non-exploita- 
tive" party and state relations among the regime and "peaceful 
coexistence" between these regimes and the capitalist and capitalist- 
oriented states. Soviet diplomacy hence was multifaceted, embracing 
state- to- state relations with Western and Western-oriented Third 
World states; party- to-party ties with ruling and nonruling com- 
munist and leftist parties and national liberation groups; state 
representation in myriad international organizations and at inter- 
national forums; and political alliances with "fraternal socialist" 
states and states of socialist orientation through the vehicle of treaties 
of friendship and cooperation (see Ideology and Objectives, this ch.). 

As the prospects for world revolution faded in the first years af- 
ter the establishment of Bolshevik rule in Russia, the Russian 
Republic began assiduously to pursue diplomatic recognition as 
a means of achieving legitimacy. At first, the Russian Republic 
had resident embassies in only a few countries. After the Soviet 
Union was established in December 1922 — joining the Russian, 
Belorussian, Ukrainian, and Transcaucasian soviet socialist 
republics — the new state continued the policy of pursuing diplo- 
matic recognition. The Soviet Union was particularly interested 
in establishing diplomatic relations with Britain and the United 
States. In 1924 the newly elected Labour Party government in Brit- 
ain recognized the Soviet Union (in 1927 the succeeding Conser- 
vative Party government broke off relations, but they were 
permanentiy restored in 1929), and in 1933 the United States es- 
tablished diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. During World 
War II, many Allied states recognized the Soviet Union. During 
the "Cold War" of the late 1940s and 1950s, many states were 
wary of establishing diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, 
and a few states, mostly in Central America and South America, 
recalled their accredited representatives. Since the general improve- 
ment in East-West relations in the 1960s, however, states in all 
regions of the world have moved to establish diplomatic relations 
with the Soviet Union. 

Since the 1960s, the Soviet Union has achieved diplomatic rela- 
tions with states in several regions where such relations were previ- 
ously unknown or uncommon — South America, Central America, 
islands in the Pacific, and states in the Persian Gulf region. The 
range and scope of the Soviet diplomatic presence has been roughly 
matched only by that of the United States. In the late 1980s, the 
Soviet Union had resident ambassadors in almost 120 states and 
consulates and trade offices in scores of states. The Soviet Union 
also tried to maintain or reestablish relations, or exchange ambas- 
sadors, with states that had exhibited hostility toward the Soviet 



412 



Foreign Policy 



Union, such as China, Egypt, and Somalia. As of 1988, the Soviet 
Union had refused to establish relations, or had broken off rela- 
tions, with only a few states, most notably Chile, Paraguay, the 
Republic of Korea (South Korea), Taiwan, and Israel. Soviet diplo- 
matic recognition of the governments of the latter three states had 
been opposed by other regional powers with which the Soviet Union 
has wished to maintain or foster close relations (North Korea with 
respect to South Korea, China with respect to Taiwan, and the 
Middle Eastern Arab states with respect to Israel). 

Party and State Visits Abroad 

An important component of Soviet foreign relations was Soviet 
state and party delegation visits to states with which the Soviet 
Union enjoyed diplomatic relations. These visits served to improve 
relations with Western states by influencing elite and popular atti- 
tudes. The visits also helped cement and sustain close ties with com- 
munist states, states with a socialist orientation, and nonaligned 
nations. Common actions were often discussed with such states, for 
example, coordinated voting on United Nations (UN) resolutions. 
Economic, scientific, cultural, and other cooperation agreements were 
also signed during these visits, although such agreements were more 
commonly signed during visits by Third World delegations to 
Moscow. These visits usually concluded with the publication of joint 
communiques that might reveal details of the nature of the visit and 
also list points of agreement on issues such as the prevention of 
nuclear war, nuclear-free zones, peaceful coexistence, and anti- 
imperialism. 

Friendship and Cooperation Treaties 

In the early 1970s, the Soviet Union began to formalize rela- 
tions with several Third World states through the signing of friend- 
ship and cooperation treaties (see table 29, Appendix A). These 
treaties were aimed at regularizing economic, political, and mili- 
tary contacts between the Soviet Union and Third World states 
over extended periods (usually twenty years). Third World regimes 
signed these treaties to obtain help in the consolidation of their rule 
or to secure advantage over or protection from regional opponents. 
All the treaties contained military cooperation provisions or pro- 
visions calling for "mutual consultations" in case of security threats 
to either party. The Soviet Union proffered these treaties in order 
to consolidate and build on existing relations in the context of an 
overarching agreement. The Soviet goal has been to encourage 
close, long-term relations with the Soviet Union. These relations 



413 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

have included military cooperation and the establishment of Soviet 
military facilities in some Third World states. 

Communist Parties Abroad 

By 1984 the Soviet Union had recognized communist and work- 
ers' parties in ninety- five countries. Fifteen of these were ruling 
communist parties. The Soviet Union considered these most ideo- 
logically mature parties as part of the world socialist system. The 
select group included the ruling parties of Albania, Bulgaria, China, 
Cuba, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Laos, Mongo- 
lia, North Korea, Poland, Romania, the Soviet Union, Vietnam, 
and Yugoslavia. Besides these ruling parties, the Soviet Union per- 
ceived other less ideologically mature ruling parties as "Marxist- 
Leninist vanguard parties," a label that distinguished them from 
"true" communist parties. These vanguard parties existed in sev- 
eral Third World "revolutionary democracies," which have in- 
cluded Afghanistan, Angola, Congo, Ethiopia, Mozambique, and 
the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (South Yemen). Non- 
ruling communist parties (of greater or lesser ideological matur- 
ity) that existed in developed capitalist and in Third World states 
"on the capitalist path of development" made up another category 
of parties. 

Lenin founded the Comintern in 1919 to guide the activities of 
communist parties and communist front organizations abroad. The 
Comintern's first act was a manifesto urging workers abroad to 
support the Bolshevik regime in Russia. Later, the Comintern be- 
came a tool the Soviet Union used to direct foreign communist par- 
ties to execute policies of benefit to the security of the Soviet Union. 
The Comintern was formally dissolved by Stalin in 1943 as a gesture 
of cooperation with the wartime allies, but the International Depart- 
ment was created to carry out its responsibilities. Another organiza- 
tion — the Communist Information Bureau (Cominform) — was 
created in 1947 to carry out liaison and propaganda duties, and 
it included as members the communist parties of Albania, Bulgar- 
ia, Czechoslovakia, France, Hungary, Italy, Romania, the Soviet 
Union, and Yugoslavia. The Cominform expelled Yugoslavia as 
a member in June 1948 for ideological deviation. With the thaw 
in relations between the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia in 1955 and 
1956, the Soviet Union formally dissolved the then-moribund 
Cominform as a gesture to the Yugoslavs. 

The Cominform conflict with Yugoslavia in 1948 signaled the 
breakup of what in the West was perceived as "monolithic com- 
munism" and the emergence of "polycentrism. " Polycentrism 
(literally, many centers), a Western term, describes the relative 



414 



Foreign Policy 



independence from Soviet control of some nonruling and ruling 
communist parties. Polycentrism was further in evidence follow- 
ing the Sino-Soviet split that became evident in the late 1950s and 
early 1960s. More recently, some foreign communist parties have 
successfully resisted Soviet efforts to convene a conference of world 
communist and workers parties, the last of which occurred in 1969. 
The emergence in the early to mid-1970s of a broad and somewhat 
disparate set of ideological beliefs, termed "Eurocommunism," 
was further evidence of poly centric tendencies. Eurocommunist 
beliefs were espoused by nonruling communist parties in France, 
Italy, Spain, and elsewhere in the West that criticized Soviet at- 
tempts to assert ideological control over foreign communist par- 
ties and even denounced Soviet foreign and domestic policies. 

Despite polycentric tendencies in the world communist move- 
ment, the Soviet Union was able to influence many parties through 
financial and propaganda support. This influence varied over time 
and according to the issue involved. The influence that the Soviet 
Union was able to exercise through the local nonruling communist 
parties was seldom significant enough to affect the policies of for- 
eign governments directly. Local communist parties have report- 
ed on the local political situation to Moscow, have engaged in 
subversive activities of benefit to the Soviet Union, have served 
as conduits for Soviet propaganda, and have attempted to rally 
local populations and elites to support Soviet policies. During the 
late 1980s, the united front (see Glossary) strategy of alliances be- 
tween nonruling communist parties and other leftist, "progressive," 
and even "petit bourgeois" parties received new emphasis. The 
goal was for communists to exercise influence through participa- 
tion in electoral politics and through holding posts in legislatures 
and executive bodies. The global trend toward democratization was 
assessed by the Soviet Union as providing opportunities for the 
united front strategy. As was noted in Pravda in 1987, "The strug- 
gle for democracy is an important way of weakening monopolistic 
state capitalism, and the results of this struggle can be a starting 
point for the preparation of socialist transformation." 

Soviet-United States Relations 

A central concern of Soviet foreign and military policy since 
World War II, relations with the United States have gone through 
cycles of "cold" and "warm" periods. A crucial factor in Soviet- 
American relations has been the mutual nuclear threat (see The 
Soviet Union and Nuclear Arms Control, this ch.). A high point 
in Soviet- American relations occurred when the Strategic Arms 
Limitation Talks (SALT — see Glossary) resulted in the May 1972 



415 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

signing of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Interim Agree- 
ment on the Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms. This event 
was an early achievement of Soviet- American detente. 

The Soviet Union and the United States differed over the mean- 
ing of the detente relationship. In the West, detente has usually 
been considered to mean a nonhostile, even harmonious, relation- 
ship. The Soviet Union, however, has preferred the terms mirnoe 
sosushchestvovanie (peaceful coexistence) or razriadka napriazhennosti 
(a discharging or easing of tensions) instead of the term detente. 
Brezhnev explained the Soviet perception of the detente relation- 
ship at the 1976 and 1981 CPSU party congresses, asserting that 
detente did not mean that the Soviet Union would cease to sup- 
port Third World national liberation movements or the world class 
struggle. In the Soviet view, detente with the West was compati- 
ble with sponsoring Cuban intervention in the Third World. 
However, Soviet-sponsored intervention in the Third World met 
with growing protest from the United States. The detente relation- 
ship conclusively ended with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan 
in December 1979. 

Following the Soviet invasion, the United States instigated a num- 
ber of trade sanctions against the Soviet Union, including an em- 
bargo on grain shipments to the Soviet Union, the cancellation of 
American participation in the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, 
and the shelving of efforts to win ratification in the United States 
Senate of the second SALT agreement. In April 1981, under the 
new administration of President Ronald Reagan, the United States 
announced the lifting of the grain embargo but also moved to tighten 
procedures concerning the export of strategically sensitive technol- 
ogy to the Soviet Union. As part of this effort to limit such ex- 
ports, the Reagan administration in 1982 unsuccessfully attempted 
to convince West European governments to block the sale of 
American-developed technology for the construction of Soviet natur- 
al gas pipelines. A freeze on cultural exchanges that had developed 
after the invasion of Afghanistan continued during Reagan's first 
term in office. 

The Soviet Union began deploying SS-20 intermediate-range 
ballistic missiles equipped with nuclear warheads along its western 
and southeastern borders in 1977. The United States and its NATO 
allies regarded this deployment as destabilizing to the nuclear 
balance in Europe, and in December 1979 NATO decided to coun- 
ter with the deployment of Pershing II intermediate-range ballis- 
tic missiles and ground-launched cruise missiles (GLCMs), both 
equipped with nuclear warheads. In November 1981, Reagan pro- 
posed the "zero option" as the solution to the nuclear imbalance 



416 



Embassy of 
the Soviet Union, 
Washington 
Courtesy 
Raymond E. Zickel 




in Western Europe. Basically, the zero option included the elimi- 
nation of SS-20s and other missiles targeted against Western Eu- 
rope and the nondeployment of countervailing NATO weapons. 
The Soviet Union refused to accept the zero option and insisted 
that French and British nuclear forces be included in the reckon- 
ing of the balance of nuclear forces in Europe and in any agree- 
ment on reductions of nuclear forces. Feeling forced to match the 
Soviet nuclear threat, NATO began countervailing deployments 
in late 1983. As the deployment date neared, the Soviet Union 
threatened to deploy additional nuclear weapons targeted on West- 
ern Europe and weapons that would place the territory of the United 
States under threat. Also, Soviet negotiators walked out of talks 
on the reduction of intermediate-range nuclear forces (the INF talks) 
and strategic forces (the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks, or 
START). The refusal to come back to the negotiating table con- 
tinued after General Secretary Iurii V. Andropov's death and Kon- 
stantin V. Chernenko's selection as general secretary in early 1984. 
The Soviet Union finally agreed to resume the INF and START 
talks around the time of Chernenko's death and Gorbachev's selec- 
tion as general secretary in March 1985. Progress was then made 
on the revamped INF talks. In 1987 the Soviet Union acceded to 
the zero option, which involved the elimination of NATO Pershing 
lis and GLCMs targeted against the Soviet Union and Eastern 
Europe and Soviet missiles targeted against Western Europe and 



417 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Asia. The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty) 
was finally signed in Washington on December 8, 1987, during 
a summit meeting between Reagan and Gorbachev. 

Between November 1982 and March 1985, the Soviet Union had 
four general secretaries (Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko, and 
Gorbachev) while the United States had a single chief executive. 
The changes of leadership in the Soviet Union had a noticeable 
effect on Soviet- American relations. Until Gorbachev assumed pow- 
er and partially consolidated his rule by 1986, the frequent changes 
in Soviet leadership resulted in the continuation of policies formu- 
lated during the late Brezhnev period. Soviet foreign policy toward 
the United States during this period increasingly took the form of 
vituperative propaganda attacks on Reagan, who, it was alleged, 
was personally responsible for derailing Soviet- American detente 
and increasing the danger of nuclear war. The low point in Soviet- 
American relations occurred in March 1983, when Reagan 
described the Soviet Union as an "evil empire . . . the focus of 
evil in the modern world," and Soviet spokesmen responded by 
attacking Reagan's "bellicose, lunatic anticommunism." The 
Soviet shoot-down of a civilian South Korean airliner in Septem- 
ber 1983 near the Soviet island of Sakhalin shocked world public 
opinion and militated against any improvement in Soviet- American 
relations at that time. In 1983 the United States was increasingly 
concerned about Soviet activities in Grenada, finally directing the 
military operation in October 1983 that was denounced by the 
Soviet Union. In November 1983, the Soviet negotiators walked 
out of the arms control talks. 

In August 1985, Gorbachev declared a unilateral moratorium 
on nuclear testing. The United States, in the midst of a nuclear 
warhead modernization program, refused to go along with the 
moratorium. Some Western analysts viewed Gorbachev's unilateral 
moratorium as a Soviet attempt to delay weapons modernization 
in the United States and, in the event that the United States re- 
fused to abide by the moratorium even unofficially, an attempt to 
depict the United States and the Reagan administration as militaris- 
tic. The Soviet Union ended the moratorium with an underground 
nuclear test in February 1987. 

A general improvement in Soviet-American relations began soon 
after Gorbachev was selected general secretary in March 1985. An- 
nual summit meetings between Reagan and Gorbachev were held 
at Geneva (November 1985); Reykjavik (October 1986); Washing- 
ton (December 1987); and Moscow (May 1988). At the Geneva 
Summit between Reagan and Gorbachev in November 1985, a new 
general cultural agreement was signed that involved exchanges of 



418 



Foreign Policy 



performing arts groups and fine arts and educational exhibits. At 
the Reykjavik Summit, some progress was made in strategic arms 
reductions negotiations, although no agreements were reached. At 
the Washington Summit, the INF Treaty was signed. At the 
Moscow Summit, an agreement increasing the level and type of 
educational exchanges was signed. Although no major arms con- 
trol agreements were signed during the Moscow summit, the sum- 
mit was significant because it demonstrated a commitment by both 
sides to a renewed detente. 

During the mid- to late 1980s, the Soviet Union also stepped 
up media contacts. Soviet spokesmen appeared regularly on Unit- 
ed States television, United States journalists were allowed un- 
precedented access to report on everyday life in the Soviet Union, 
and video conferences (termed "tele-bridges") were held between 
various United States groups and selected Soviet citizens. 

Soviet-West European Relations 

Soviet relations with Western Europe since World War II have 
been heavily colored by Soviet relations with Eastern Europe and 
by the presence of Warsaw Pact forces arrayed against NATO 
forces. The Soviet influence over Eastern Europe, reinforced in 
West European eyes by Soviet invasions of Hungary in 1956 and 
Czechoslovakia in 1968 and by the buildup of Soviet conventional 
and nuclear forces, fostered efforts in the 1980s among the West 
European states of NATO to bolster their defenses and discouraged 
closer relations between West European countries and the Soviet 
Union. 

Since the end of World War II and the establishment of Soviet 
hegemony over Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union has had five goals 
in regard to Western Europe: preventing the rearming and nuclear- 
ization of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany); 
preventing the political, economic, and military integration of 
Western Europe; obtaining West European endorsement of the ter- 
ritorial status quo in Europe; encouraging anti- Americanism and 
troubled relations with the United States; and fostering neutral- 
ism, nuclear disarmament, and the creation of nuclear weapons- 
free zones through the encouragement of peace groups and leftist 
movements. The Soviet Union has succeeded in achieving some 
of these goals but has been unsuccessful in achieving others. 

In general, Soviet leaders have stated that the proper relation- 
ship between Western Europe and the Soviet Union should be simi- 
lar to the relationship between Finland and the Soviet Union. As 
stated by then-Politburo member Andropov in 1978, "Soviet- 
Finnish relations today constitute a sound and stable system of 



419 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

enjoyment of equal rights of cooperation in the diverse areas of 
political, economic, and political life. This constitutes detente, as 
embodied in daily contacts, detente which makes peace stronger 
and the life of people better and calmer." More broadly, neutral- 
ism is extolled by the Soviet Union as a transitional historical model 
for Western and Third World states to follow in their relations with 
the Soviet Union, typified by nonparticipation in Western mili- 
tary alliances and economic organizations and by political support 
for anti-imperialism, capitalist disarmament, national liberation, 
and other foreign policies favored by the Soviet Union. 

During the early to mid-1980s, Soviet leaders attempted to foster 
a "European detente" separate from detente with the United States. 
This attempt failed, however, because of the determination of West 
European governments to modernize NATO and deploy counter- 
vailing nuclear systems and the failure of Soviet-cultivated peace 
and other groups to influence West European policy. 

France 

Beginning in the mid-1960s, the Soviet Union cultivated a 
"privileged" relationship with France. The high point of Soviet- 
French relations occurred during the administration of President 
Charles de Gaulle (1959-69). Following the Soviet invasion of 
Czechoslovakia in August 1968, Soviet-French relations cooled, 
although state visits continued. During the leadership of President 
Francois Mitterrand, first elected as part of a coalition government 
in May 1981, France pursued several policies objectionable to the 
Soviet Union, such as selling arms to China, militarily opposing 
Libya's invasion of Chad, working with West Germany to strength- 
en West European defense, and expelling a large number of Soviet 
diplomats and other personnel involved in technology theft and 
other forms of espionage. Gorbachev's first state visit as general 
secretary was to France in October 1985. The visit provided a public 
display of the Soviet Union's interest in maintaining a special rela- 
tionship with France and also served as an attempt to exacerbate 
intra- European rivalries. Nevertheless, the general trend of French 
foreign policy in the late 1980s toward greater cooperation with 
NATO frustrated Soviet efforts to maintain a privileged relation- 
ship. France's refusal in 1986 and 1987 to discuss a freeze or a 
reduction of the French nuclear forces {force de frappe, or force de dis- 
suasion) further strained Soviet-French relations. 

West Germany 

A recurrent theme in Soviet propaganda concerning West 
Germany has been the supposed resurgence of revanchism and 



420 



Foreign Policy 



militarism, indicating to some degree real Soviet fears of a rearmed 
and nuclearized West Germany. The Soviet Union strongly op- 
posed the creation of multilateral nuclear forces in Europe in the 
1960s and demanded that West Germany sign the Treaty on the 
Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which the Soviet Union had 
signed in July 1968. After Willy Brandt of the Social Democratic 
Party was elected chancellor in October 1969, he implemented a 
detente, termed Ostpolitik (literally, Eastern policy), with the Soviet 
Union. West Germany signed the nonproliferation treaty in 
November 1969. In August 1970, the Soviet Union and West Ger- 
many signed a treaty calling for the peaceful settiement of disputes, 
with West Germany agreeing to respect the territorial integrity of 
the states of Europe and the validity of the Oder-Neisse line divid- 
ing East Germany from Poland. The provisions of this bilateral 
treaty became multilateral with the signing of the Final Act of the 
Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (Helsinki Ac- 
cords) in 1975, in which the Western signatories, including the Unit- 
ed States, recognized the de facto hegemony of the Soviet Union 
over Eastern Europe and the existing territorial boundaries of the 
European states. The Helsinki Accords also bound the signatories 
to respect basic principles of human rights. In the early 1980s, the 
Soviet Union began a harsh propaganda campaign accusing West 
Germany of revanchism and militarism because of West German 
initiation and support of NATO efforts to counter the Soviet deploy- 
ment of SS-20s targeted on Western Europe. Gorbachev remained 
cool toward West Germany because of its role in fostering a NATO 
response to SS-20 deployments and delayed scheduling his first 
visit until June 1989. This visit was very successful in emphasizing 
Gorbachev's message of the "common European home" and the 
peaceful intentions of the Soviet Union regarding Western Europe. 

Britain 

In the years immediately following the Bolshevik Revolution, 
the Soviet leadership assiduously pursued diplomatic relations with 
Britain, the archetypical "imperialist" power, as part of its efforts 
to win recognition as a legitimate regime. After World War II, 
the Soviet Union perceived Britain as an "imperialist power in 
decline," especially after Britain relinquished most of its colonies. 
Nevertheless, Britain remained an important power in Soviet eyes 
because of its nuclear forces, influential role as head of the British 
Commonwealth, and close ties with the United States. 

In general, Soviet relations with Britain have never been as 
important a component of Soviet foreign policy toward Western 
Europe as have been relations with France (especially during the 



421 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

de Gaulle period) or with West Germany (especially during the 
Brandt period). Several reasons for Britain's lesser importance ex- 
isted. Unlike West Germany, Britain is not subject to Soviet po- 
litical pressures exerted through the instrument of a divided people. 
Much smaller than its French counterpart, the British Communist 
Party exerted less influence in electoral politics. The British econ- 
omy has also been less dependent than that of other West Europe- 
an states on Soviet and East European trade and energy resources. 

In December 1984, shortly before Gorbachev became general 
secretary, he made his first visit to London. Prime Minister Mar- 
garet Thatcher declared that he was a leader she could "do busi- 
ness with," an assessment that boosted Gorbachev's stature in the 
Soviet Union and abroad. This assessment was repeated upon 
Thatcher's visit to the Soviet Union in April 1987. Under Gor- 
bachev's leadership, the Soviet Union renewed its attempts to 
persuade Britain and France to enter into strategic nuclear disar- 
mament negotiations, which as of 1989 they had resisted. 

Spain and Portugal 

Soviet contacts with Spain and Portugal were almost nonexis- 
tent in the post- World War II period until the 1970s, when changes 
in leadership of both countries paved the way for the establishment 
of diplomatic relations. Portugal established diplomatic relations 
with the Soviet Union in June 1974, and Spain reestablished diplo- 
matic ties in February 1977, broken in 1939 after the Nationalists 
defeated the Soviet-backed Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. 
Both countries have relatively large, long-established pro-Soviet 
communist parties, with the Portuguese Communist Party during 
the 1980s enjoying more electoral support and seats in the legisla- 
ture. In March 1982, Spain joined NATO (Portugal was a found- 
ing member), a move opposed by the Soviet Union and the 
Communist Party of Spain. Soviet relations with Spain during the 
1980s were businesslike, with King Juan Carlos visiting Moscow 
in May 1 984 and Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez visiting in May 
1986. Relations with Portugal in the early 1980s were relatively 
poor, with Portugal criticizing the invasion of Afghanistan and other 
Soviet policies. Relations improved during the late 1980s, when 
President Mario Soares visited Moscow in November 1987 and 
signed trade and other cooperation agreements; Shevardnadze paid 
a return visit to Lisbon in March 1988. 

Scandinavia 

The central factor in Scandinavian relations with the Soviet 
Union is the proximity of Norway, Sweden, and Finland to major 



422 



Foreign Policy 



Soviet bases on the Kola Peninsula (see fig. 6). Besides Turkey, 
Norway is the only NATO country bordering the Soviet Union. 

The interrelated Soviet objectives in Scandinavia have been to 
maintain freedom of navigation through the Baltic Sea into the 
North Sea, sustain the neutrality of Finland and Sweden, and en- 
courage Norway, Denmark, and Iceland to withdraw from NATO. 
The Scandinavian states act to minimize the Soviet security threat 
through a mix of military preparedness and nonprovocative, ac- 
commodationist policies. Norway, Denmark, and Sweden do not 
allow the stationing of foreign troops, the establishment of foreign 
military bases, or the installation of nuclear weapons on their ter- 
ritory. Sweden's neutrality has been based on the concept of total 
national defense, which stresses involvement of the civilian popu- 
lation, as well as military forces, in defending territorial integrity. 
Since the 1970s, Sweden has been concerned about repeated Soviet 
submarine incursions into its territorial waters. Finland's * ' posi- 
tive neutrality" is based on a special relationship with the Soviet 
Union codified in their 1948 Treaty of Mutual Assistance and 
Cooperation. 

Soviet-East European Relations 

Continued Soviet influence over the East European countries be- 
longing to the Warsaw Pact and Council for Mutual Economic As- 
sistance (Comecon) — Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, 
Hungary, Poland, and Romania — remained a fundamental regional 
priority of Soviet foreign policy in mid- 1989 (see Appendix B; Ap- 
pendix C). The CPSU party program ratified at the Twenty-Seventh 
Party Congress in 1986 designated these East European states as 
members of the "socialist commonwealth" (along with Cuba, Mon- 
golia, and Vietnam) and depicted the establishment of socialism in 
Eastern Europe as a validation of "the general laws of socialism [com- 
munism] . " By staking the validity of Marxist- Leninist ideology on 
the continuation of communism in Eastern Europe, the Soviet leader- 
ship in effect perceived attempts to repudiate communism as threats 
to the ideological validity of the Soviet system itself. The Soviet 
leadership expressed this sentiment in terms of the "irreversibility 
of the gains for socialism" in Eastern Europe. In the late 1980s, 
however, liberalization occurred, and the situation was tolerated by 
the Soviet leadership. 

After the August 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, 
which ended a process of liberalization begun by the Communist 
Party of Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union made clear the irrever- 
sibility of communism in Eastern Europe through statements that 
have come to be known in the West as the "Brezhnev Doctrine" 



423 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

and are termed by the Soviet Union as "socialist international- 
ism." In a speech delivered in Poland in November 1968, Brezh- 
nev stated, "When external and internal forces hostile to socialism 
try to turn the development of a given socialist country in the direc- 
tion of the restoration of the capitalist system . . . this is no longer 
merely a problem for that country's people, but a common problem, 
the concern of all socialist countries. " The Brezhnev Doctrine was 
repeated in the 1986 party program's call for "mutual assistance 
in resolving the tasks of the building and defense of the new socie- 
ty," indicating no real change in this doctrine during the mid- to 
late 1980s. During his visit to Yugoslavia in March 1988, Gor- 
bachev made statements that some Western observers termed the 
"repudiation of the Brezhnev Doctrine," signaling Soviet willing- 
ness to tolerate some political liberalization in Eastern Europe. 

Soviet influence over Eastern Europe began with the Soviet oc- 
cupation of territories during World War II. By 1948 communist 
regimes had come to power in all the East European states. In Yu- 
goslavia, however, Josip Broz Tito, a nationalist communist who 
had played a major role in the resistance to the occupying Ger- 
man forces, opposed Joseph V. Stalin's attempts to assert control 
over Yugoslav domestic politics. Tito's actions resulted in Yugos- 
lavia's expulsion from the Cominform in 1948 and the declara- 
tion of a trade embargo. In 1954, after Stalin's death, the Comin- 
form ended its embargo. In May 1955, Nikita S. Khrushchev visited 
Belgrade and proclaimed the doctrine of "many roads to social- 
ism," acknowledging Yugoslavia's right to a relatively indepen- 
dent domestic and foreign policy. 

Leadership changes in the Soviet Union have often been followed 
by upheaval in Eastern Europe. Stalin's death created popular ex- 
pectations of a relative relaxation of coercive controls. The slow 
pace of change contributed to domestic violence in three East Eu- 
ropean states — East Germany, Hungary, and Poland — within four 
years of Stalin's death in March 1953. In June 1953, the Soviet 
army peremptorily suppressed a wave of strikes and riots in East 
Germany over increased production quotas and police repression. 
In June 1956, four months after the Twentieth Party Congress at 
which Khrushchev delivered his "secret speech" denouncing Sta- 
linist terror, anti- Soviet riots broke out in Poznari, Poland. In Hun- 
gary, anti-Soviet riots broke out in October 1956 and escalated 
immediately to full-scale revolt, with the Hungarians calling for 
full independence, the disbanding of the communist party, and with- 
drawal from the Warsaw Pact. The Soviet Union invaded Hun- 
gary on November 4, 1956, and Hungarian prime minister Imre 
Nagy was arrested and later executed. The events of the 1950s 



424 



Foreign Policy 



taught the Soviet Union at least three lessons: that the policy of 
teaching the younger generation in Eastern Europe to support 
Soviet-imposed communism had failed; that Soviet military power 
and occupation forces were the main guarantees of the continued 
existence of East European communism; and that some limited local 
control over domestic political and economic policy had to be 
granted, including some freedom in the selection of leading party 
officials. 

Czechoslovakia's 1968 liberalization, or 4 'Prague Spring" (which 
occurred during a period of collective leadership in the Soviet Union 
while Brezhnev was still consolidating power), led to a Warsaw Pact 
invasion in August 1968, illustrating that even gradual reforms were 
intolerable at that time to the Soviet Union. This lesson was illus- 
trated again, but in a different form, during the events in Poland 
of 1980-81. The reforms sought by Polish workers — independent 
trade unions with the right to strike — were unacceptable to the 
Soviet Union, but for a variety of reasons the Soviet Union en- 
couraged an "internal invasion" (use of Polish police and armed 
forces to quell disturbances) rather than occupation of the country 
by Soviet military forces. The new Polish prime minister and first 
secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party, Army General 
Wojciech Jaruzelski, declared martial law on December 13, 1981, 
and banned the independent trade union movement Solidarity. 

Gorbachev's political report to the Twenty- Seventh Party Con- 
gress in February-March 1986 emphasized the "many roads to so- 
cialism" in Eastern Europe and called for cooperation, rather than 
uniformity, in Soviet-East European relations. The new party pro- 
gram ratified at the congress, however, reemphasized the need for 
tight Soviet control over Eastern Europe. Additionally, the five- 
year plan ratified at the congress called for integrated perestroika 
(see Glossary) among the Comecon countries, with each East Eu- 
ropean country specializing in the development and production of 
various high-technology goods under arrangements largely con- 
trolled by the Soviet Union. 

Gorbachev's emphasis on perestroika and glasnost' (see Glossary) 
domestically and within Eastern Europe was supported to varying 
degrees by the East European leaders in the mid- to late 1980s. 
The leaders of Poland, Hungary, and Bulgaria apparently sup- 
ported Gorbachev's reforms, while the leaders of East Germany, 
Czechoslovakia, and Romania resisted far-reaching reforms. 
Although there were varying degrees of compliance in Eastern Eu- 
rope with Gorbachev's reform agenda, in the mid- to late 1980s 
the basic Soviet policy of maintaining a high level of influence in 
Eastern Europe had not been altered, although the nature of Soviet 



425 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

influence apparently had shifted away from coercion toward polit- 
ical and economic instruments of influence. 

Si no-Soviet Relations 

Soviet relations with China have, on the whole, been cool since 
the 1950s. In 1959 and 1960, the Soviet withdrawal of all econom- 
ic advisers, Khrushchev's renunciation of the agreement to pro- 
vide a sample nuclear weapon to China, and increasing mutual 
accusations of ideological deviation were all evidence of the politi- 
cal rift between the two countries. After Khrushchev's ouster in 
1964, Brezhnev attempted to establish better relations with Chi- 
na, but his efforts foundered in the late 1960s. Riots by Chinese 
Red Guards in January-February 1967 led to the evacuation of 
nonessential Soviet diplomatic personnel from Beijing. In 1968 and 
1969, serious Sino-Soviet border clashes occurred along the Amur 
and Ussuri rivers. Beginning in the late 1960s, Brezhnev proposed 
an "Asian collective security system," which he envisioned as a 
means of containing China. This proposal, repeated by successive 
Soviet leaders, has been rejected by most Asian countries. 

During the 1970s, China began its policy of improving relations 
with the West to counter Soviet political and military pressure in 
Asia. After Mao Zedong's death in September 1976, the Soviet 
Union sought to improve relations with China, but by early 1977 
the polemics had renewed, and by mid- 1978 increasing military 
tensions between Cambodia (China's ally) and Vietnam (the Soviet 
Union's ally) contributed to a return to poor relations. At the 
Eleventh National Party Congress of the Chinese Communist Party 
(CCP), held in August 1977, CCP chairman Hua Guofeng declared 
that the Soviet Union represented a greater threat than the Unit- 
ed States to world peace and Chinese national security. In keep- 
ing with this assessment, the Sino-Japanese Treaty of Peace and 
Friendship, signed in August 1978, contained an "anti-hegemony 
clause" in which the signatories renounced the pursuit of hegem- 
ony and opposed the efforts of other states — implying the Soviet 
Union — to gain hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region. The Sino- 
American joint communique of December 1978 contained an analo- 
gous clause. 

In February 1979, China launched a limited military incursion 
into Vietnam in retaliation for the Vietnamese invasion of Cam- 
bodia, a Chinese ally. The Soviet Union harshly condemned this 
Chinese incursion and stepped up arms shipments to Vietnam. 

In April 1979, China declared that it would not renew the 1950 
Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assis- 
tance, but it offered to begin negotiations with the Soviet Union 



426 



Foreign Policy 



to improve relations. These negotiations began in late September 
1979 (separate border negotiations had been ongoing since 1969), 
with China demanding a cutback in Soviet troop strength along 
the border, withdrawal of Soviet troops from Mongolia, an end 
to Soviet aid to Vietnam, and a Vietnamese military withdrawal 
from Cambodia. These negotiations were cut off by the Chinese 
in January 1980 after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan the previ- 
ous month. The Chinese thereafter added the demand that an im- 
provement in Sino- Soviet relations required Soviet withdrawal of 
troops from Afghanistan. 

At the Twenty-Sixth Party Congress in February 1981, Brezh- 
nev reported that * 'unfortunately, there are no grounds yet to speak 
of any changes for the better in Beijing's foreign policy." Rela- 
tions began to improve, however, after Brezhnev delivered a con- 
ciliatory speech at Tashkent in March 1982, and in October the 
Sino-Soviet border "consultations" — broken off after the invasion 
of Afghanistan — were reopened. 

After Gorbachev became general secretary in March 1985, re- 
lations with China did not improve markedly at first. Neverthe- 
less, high-level visits and discussions were encouraging enough that 
Gorbachev, at the Twenty- Seventh Party Congress in February- 
March 1986, was able to "speak with satisfaction about a certain 
amount of improvement" in relations with China. In his Vlad- 
ivostok speech in July 1986, Gorbachev promised to remove some 
of the obstacles to better Sino-Soviet relations, announcing that 
six Soviet regiments would be withdrawn from Afghanistan, that 
some troops would be withdrawn from Mongolia, that Soviet negoti- 
ators would discuss a reduction in Soviet forces along the Sino- 
Soviet border, and that the Soviet Union would commit itself to 
certain methodologies in delineating the Sino-Soviet borders. 
Another Soviet gesture was the removal of SS-20 missiles from the 
border with China as a result of the Soviet-American INF Treaty 
of December 1987. In April 1988, the Soviet Union signed accords 
calling for the total withdrawal of Soviet military forces from Af- 
ghanistan, which were a serious obstacle to better Sino-Soviet re- 
lations. During 1988 Vietnam committed itself to removing troops 
from Cambodia, overcoming another obstacle to improved rela- 
tions and a summit. In 1987 and repeatedly in 1988, Gorbachev 
proposed a Sino-Soviet summit meeting, which was finally sched- 
uled for June 1989. It was the first since the Khrushchev period. 

Soviet-Japanese Relations 

The poor relations between the Soviet Union and Japan can prob- 
ably be said to have originated in Japan's victory over imperial 



427 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Russia in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05. During the Rus- 
sian Civil War (1918-21), Japan (as a member of the Allied inter- 
ventionist forces) occupied Vladivostok and did not leave until 1922. 
In the waning days of World War II, Stalin abrogated the 1941 
neutrality pact between Japan and the Soviet Union, declaring war 
on Japan days before Japan surrendered in August 1945 in order 
to occupy vast areas of East Asia formerly held by the Japanese. 
Fifty- six islands of the Kuril chain, as well as the southern half of 
Sakhalin, were subsequently incorporated into the Soviet Union. 
The extreme southernmost islands of the Kuril chain constitute what 
the Japanese still term the Northern Territories — the small islands 
of Shikotan-to, Kunashir, and Etorofu and the Habomai Islands. 
Stalin's absorption of the Northern Territories prevented the con- 
clusion of a Soviet-Japanese World War II peace treaty and the 
establishment of closer relations between the two states. The Soviet 
Union continued to refuse to return the Northern Territories be- 
cause such a return would encourage the Chinese to push their own 
territorial claims. Also, the Soviet Union has used the islands as 
part of an antisubmarine warfare network guarding the mouth of 
the Sea of Okhotsk. 

Under Gorbachev, Soviet-Japanese relations thawed somewhat. 
Foreign Minister Shevardnadze visited Tokyo in January 1986 and 
December 1988, and a new Soviet ambassador, fluent in Japanese, 
was posted to Tokyo in mid- 1986. As of 1989, however, political 
and economic relations had not shown signs of great improvement. 
Soviet trade with Japan remained far below its potential, given the 
Japanese need for energy and raw materials available from the 
Soviet Union and Gorbachev's desires to import technology to 
modernize the Soviet economy. 

The Soviet Union and the Third World 

Until Stalin's death in 1953, Soviet activity in the Third World 
was limited. Khrushchev recognized that the number of indepen- 
dent Third World states was increasing because of post- World War 
II decolonialization, and he pictured these states as moving onto 
the noncapitalist path of development and progressing quickly 
toward the achievement of Soviet-style socialism. Khrushchev divid- 
ed the Third World states into three categories. The first category, 
capitalist-oriented states, mainly consisted of newly independent 
states that had not yet chosen the noncapitalist path. In the second 
category were the so-called national democracies, anti-Western states 
that were implementing some economic centralization and nation- 
alization programs and hence had embarked on the path of non- 
capitalist development. In the third category were "revolutionary 



428 



Foreign Policy 



democracies, ' ' which professed Marxism-Leninism as their ideology 
and had set up ruling communist-style parties (termed "Marxist- 
Leninist vanguard parties" by the Soviet Union). Since the late 
1960s, the term "socialist orientation" has been increasingly used 
in the Soviet Union to describe Third World states on the non- 
capitalist path of development, although the states with ruling van- 
guard parties still have been termed revolutionary democracies. 

Since the late 1970s, Soviet analysts have tended to regard the 
nature and future of the Third World either conservatively or prag- 
matically. On the one hand, conservative Soviet analysts have seen 
the Third World as making a choice between two paths — capitalism 
and socialism — and have maintained that only the latter path leads 
to political, social, and economic development. Pragmatic analysts, 
on the other hand, have seen the maintenance of some elements 
of capitalism as essential for the economic and political develop- 
ment of Third World countries. Among the pragmatic analysts, 
though, there have been different views about the pace of the tran- 
sition to socialism in the Third World, with the more pessimistic 
theorists even suggesting the indefinite existence of mixed econo- 
mies in Third World states. 

The conservative theorists have tended to advocate the estab- 
lishment of Marxist-Leninist vanguard parties in Third World 
states, whereas the pragmatists have advocated a united front stra- 
egy in which the local communist and leftist parties ally with other 
"progressive" parties and groups and work to achieve change 
peacefully through elections and propaganda. Internal Soviet de- 
bates aside, the Soviet Union began to favor a dual policy toward 
the Third World in the 1970s, stressing the establishment of van- 
guard parties in some states and the united front policy in others. 
Rhetorically, and to some degree in action, though, Soviet lead- 
ers have placed greater emphasis on the united front policy in the 
late 1980s. 

In the CPSU party program and in the political report delivered 
by Gorbachev in February 1986, there was a discernible de-empha- 
sis on Soviet concern with socialist-oriented Third World states. 
The party program emphasized that "the practice of the Soviet 
Union's relations with the liberated countries has shown that there 
are also real grounds for cooperation with the young states that 
are traveling the capitalist road." According to some Western 
analysts, Gorbachev indicated the nature of this reorientation during 
his visit to India in November 1986. At that time, Gorbachev referred 
to Soviet relations with India as the model of the "new thinking" 
toward Third World states having a "capitalist orientation." 



429 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Reasons for this possible Soviet reorientation may have includ- 
ed desires to use technologies available in some of the "newly in- 
dustrialized countries" for Soviet economic development, desires 
to foster positive trade flows and earn hard currency or access to 
desirable commodities, and attempts to encourage anti-Western 
foreign policies and closer alignment with the Soviet Union. As 
of the late 1980s, this possible reorientation did not include political- 
military abandonment of Asian communist states (Laos and Viet- 
nam) or of "revolutionary democratic" or "progressive" regimes 
(such as Angola, Libya, Mozambique, or Nicaragua). The reorien- 
tation, rather, may have represented an attempt to widen the scope 
of Soviet interests in the Third World. As of 1989, the only case 
of possible Soviet "abandonment" of a so-called revolutionary 
democracy would be the withdrawal of military forces from Af- 
ghanistan, although the Soviet leaders hoped that they would be 
able to maintain some presence and influence in Kabul and in areas 
bordering the Soviet Union and in other enclaves. 

Middle East and North Africa 

Among the Third World regions, the Middle East was a central 
concern of Soviet foreign policy. The region borders the Soviet 
Union and therefore has a direct impact on national security. Also, 
various ethnic, religious, and language groups existing in the region 
are found also in Soviet border areas and thus constitute a possi- 
ble threat to Soviet control. The Middle East is also of strategic 
concern because the Mediterranean Sea and Persian Gulf serve 
as waterways joining together Europe, Asia, and North Africa, and 
the region contains oil resources vital to Western industrial pro- 
duction. 

In the post- World War II period, the main Soviet goal in the 
region has been to reduce British and, more recently, United States 
influence. Termination of the British colonial and protective role 
in the Middle East by the early 1970s created a military power vacu- 
um in the region, which Iran sought unsuccessfully to fill with Unit- 
ed States backing. In the late 1980s, however, the growing Soviet 
military presence in the region was underscored by the belated Unit- 
ed States commitment to protect shipping in the Persian Gulf from 
Iranian attack, after the Soviet Union had already begun its own 
efforts to protect such shipping at the behest of the Kuwaitis. 

Turkey 

Soviet relations with Turkey were poor during the Stalin period 
because of Soviet territorial claims against Turkey. These claims 
helped induce Turkey to join NATO in 1952. Relations improved 



430 



Foreign Policy 



during the 1950s and 1960s to the point where Khrushchev began 
giving economic assistance to Turkey in the early 1960s. During 
the 1980s, this economic assistance represented the largest program 
of Soviet aid to any noncommunist Third World state. Turkish 
relations with the Soviet Union further improved after the United 
States imposed an arms embargo on Turkey to protest the 1974 
invasion and occupation of northern Cyprus. During the 1980s, 
Turkey continued a delicate balancing act between security cooper- 
ation within NATO and good relations with the Soviet Union. 

Iran and Iraq 

During the 1970s, the Soviet Union attempted to consolidate a 
closer relationship with Iraq while also maintaining normal rela- 
tions with Iran. Soviet arms transfers to Iraq started in 1959 when, 
after Colonel Abd al Karim Qasim overthrew the pro-Western 
monarchy, Iraq withdrew from the Baghdad Pact. These arms 
transfers continued during the 1960s and increased after the sign- 
ing of the Soviet-Iraqi Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation in 
1972. The Soviet Union increased arms shipments to support Iraq's 
counterinsurgency efforts against the Kurds (whom the Soviet 
Union had earlier supported). Iraqi relations with the Soviet Union 
became strained in the late 1970s after discovery of an Iraqi com- 
munist party plot to overthrow the leadership and because the Soviet 
Union was backing Ethiopian attempts to suppress the Iraqi- 
supported Eritrean insurgency. Nevertheless, the Iraqi policy of 
acquiring Soviet arms and military equipment in exchange for oil 
was continued by Saddam Husayn, who succeeded to the presidency 
of Iraq in 1979. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 
December 1979, however, Saddam's government condemned the 
invasion, and Iraqi-Soviet relations deteriorated further. When Iraq 
invaded Iran in September 1980, the Soviet Union halted arms 
shipments to Iraq, which drove Iraq to make desperate purchases 
in the private arms market. Relations thus became particularly 
strained between the Soviet Union and Iraq. Although normal re- 
lations between the two countries were resumed after 1982 when 
the arms shipments were renewed, Soviet efforts to draw Iraq into 
its political sphere of influence were not successful during the 1980s, 
and Iraq remained nonaligned. 

The shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, responding to Iraq's 
military buildup and the irredentist ambitions of Iraq against 
Kuwait and Iran, himself concluded arms agreements with the 
Soviet Union in the mid- to late 1960s, while maintaining Iran's 
membership in the Western-oriented Central Treaty Organization 
(CENTO), which was formerly known as the Baghdad Pact. The 



431 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Soviet Union maintained cordial relations with the shah until the 
end of 1978, when the deteriorating security situation in Iran sig- 
naled the imminent collapse of the dynasty. The Soviet Union ini- 
tially supported Ayatollah Sayyid Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini after 
his return to Iran in February 1979 (he had been exiled in 1963). 
During the initial phases of the Iran-Iraq War, the Soviet Union 
made overtures to Iran, but efforts to improve relations with Kho- 
meini failed. 

The hope of the Soviet Union had been to act as the broker of 
the Iran-Iraq conflict, much as it acted in the 1965 Indian-Pakistani 
conflict and as it attempted to do during the Somali-Ethiopian con- 
flict of 1977-78. Although the cease-fire agreed to between the two 
belligerents in 1988 owed little to Soviet offices, the related Soviet 
goal of achieving close relations with both Iran and Iraq remained 
a component of Soviet foreign policy. The cease-fire benefited the 
Soviet Union in that it relieved the Soviet Union from protecting 
Iraq from military defeat, a defeat that would have demonstrated 
to the Arab world and to the Third World generally that Soviet 
leaders were insufficiently committed to states that had signed 
treaties of friendship and cooperation with the Soviet Union. 

Other Middle Eastern States 

Soviet relations with several Arab states improved during the 
mid- to late 1980s. In late 1985, Oman and the United Arab 
Emirates established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. 
Relations also improved with Bahrain, Kuwait, the Yemen Arab 
Republic (North Yemen), Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. This 
Soviet policy of improving ties with Western-oriented Arab states, 
as well as with the radical regimes of Syria and South Yemen, in- 
dicated a shift in Soviet policy away from the forging of a radical 
bloc of states toward a more flexible diplomatic approach to Mid- 
dle Eastern problems. A major objective of this more flexible Soviet 
policy was to achieve the convening of an Arab-Israeli conference 
in which the Soviet Union would act as the primary peace broker. 
The Soviet Union began pursuing this objective in the 1970s as part 
of its general effort to erode United States influence in the region. 

Gorbachev pursued closer ties with several moderate Middle 
Eastern states — Kuwait, Egypt, Jordan, and Israel — while main- 
taining ties with radical regimes such as those in Syria, Libya, and 
South Yemen. In May 1987, Kuwait sought Soviet protection of 
its shipping in the Persian Gulf, and the Soviet Union agreed to 
let Kuwait charter Soviet-flagged tankers to transport oil. The Soviet 
Union also increased the size of its naval task force in the Persian 
Gulf. For the first time since the expulsion of Soviet military 



432 



Foreign Policy 



advisers in 1972 and the abrogation of the 1971 Soviet-Egyptian 
Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation in 1976, a Soviet ambas- 
sador was posted to Cairo in 1985. Also, the Soviet Union agreed 
to reschedule Egypt's military debts on favorable terms. The Soviet 
Union agreed to provide Jordan with new weaponry, and Jordan's 
King Hussein announced his support for the convening of an in- 
ternational conference on the Middle East in which the Soviet Union 
would participate. This improvement in relations occurred despite 
Jordan's arrest of local communist party leaders in the spring of 
1986. Lastiy, the Soviet Union made several overtures to Israel 
in 1985-89 regarding reestablishment of diplomatic relations — 
severed in June 1967 as a result of the June 1967 War — in an at- 
tempt to gain Israeli support for an international conference on 
the Middle East. The Soviet Union had de-emphasized its previ- 
ous condition that Israel withdraw from territories occupied dur- 
ing the Arab-Israeli June 1967 War before the reestablishment of 
relations, but the Israelis insisted on restoration of relations be- 
fore the convening of the international conference. In 1987-88 the 
Soviet Union and Israel exchanged consular missions, but as of 
1989 full diplomatic relations had not been restored. 

Asia 

The Soviet Union had at least four regional objectives in Asia: 
defense of the Soviet Union's eastern borders, including border 
areas claimed by Japan, China, and Mongolia; maintenance of 
Soviet alliances, as embodied in treaties of friendship and cooper- 
ation with India, Mongolia, North Korea, Vietnam, and Afghan- 
istan; establishment of better relations with the Western-oriented, 
more economically advanced states in order to obtain technology 
and assistance in the economic development of Siberia; and, related 
to the other objectives, establishment of a pro- Soviet orientation 
among the states of the region that would have the effect of isolat- 
ing China, South Korea, and the United States. The main instru- 
ment used in pursuit of these objectives has been the large Soviet 
military presence in Asia. Stressing that the Soviet Union is an 
Asian power, Gorbachev has attempted to establish or consolidate 
better relations with several states in the region, mainly China, 
Japan, and India. In 1988 Gorbachev had also attempted to re- 
move Afghanistan as an issue blocking the establishment or con- 
solidation of better relations with Asian states by negotiating a 
timetable for the withdrawal of Soviet combat forces. 

Afghanistan 

Soviet involvement with Afghanistan goes back to the 1920s. In 



433 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

1921, as a means to reduce British influence in the region and to 
get arms, Afghanistan signed a treaty of friendship with the Soviet 
Union. The treaty also called for Amanullah, the Afghan amir (rul- 
er), to close his northern border. The border had been serving as 
a refuge for the Basmachi, Muslim insurgents opposed to the im- 
position of Soviet power in the khanate of Bukhara (now part of 
the Tadzhik, Uzbek, and Turkmen republics). In 1921 and 1931, 
the Soviet Union and Afghanistan signed treaties on neutrality and 
mutual nonaggression. Afghanistan, however, generally adhered 
in foreign policy to the principle of bi-tarafi, or a balanced rela- 
tionship with great powers. In 1955 Prime Minister Mohammad 
Daoud Khan abandoned this policy when he signed a military agree- 
ment with Czechoslovakia. In December of that year, during a visit 
to Afghanistan, Khrushchev signed an economic agreement and 
reaffirmed the 1931 Afghan-Soviet neutrality treaty. A major rea- 
son for the shift in Afghan policy was Daoud' s interest in gaining 
support for his goal of absorbing Pakistan's North- West Frontier 
Province into Afghanistan. 

In April 1978, Daoud was overthrown and executed by the rad- 
ical People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), led by 
Hafizullah Amin and Nur Muhammad Taraki. Later that year 
Taraki, then president, went to Moscow and signed a twenty-year 
treaty of friendship and cooperation with the Soviet Union that 
encompassed and revamped commitments contained in the 1921, 
1926 (a trade agreement), and 1931 Soviet- Afghan treaties. In Sep- 
tember 1979, Taraki was ousted by Amin, following an apparent 
attempt by Taraki himself to remove Amin. The Afghan populace 
became increasingly opposed to Amin's radical policies, and the 
security of the regime became endangered. Finding their position 
in Afghanistan imperiled, the Soviet leadership decided to invade 
the country in December 1979. Soviet troops or guards allegedly 
killed Amin and brought in Babrak Karmal (who had earlier fled 
to the Soviet Union during factional struggle within the PDPA) 
as the new secretary general of the PDPA. The invasion resulted 
in worldwide condemnation of the Soviet Union. The UN Gener- 
al Assembly, the Nonaligned Movement, the Organization of the 
Islamic Conference, NATO, and the Association of Southeast Asian 
Nations (ASEAN) all called for the withdrawal of ''foreign" troops 
from Afghanistan. In June 1982, indirect talks began under UN 
auspices between the Afghan and Pakistani governments concerning 
resolution of the conflict. In May 1986, in an attempt to win Af- 
ghan support for the Soviet-installed regime, Karmal was replaced 
by Sayid Mohammad Najibullah as secretary general of the PDPA, 
and a campaign was intensified calling for "national reconciliation" 



434 



Foreign Policy 



between the Soviet- supported regime and the Islamic resistance, 
the mujahidin (literally, holy warriors) and their supporters. 

Gorbachev repeatedly termed Afghanistan a "bleeding wound," 
although he did not admit that the Soviet occupation and the Soviet- 
supported regime were opposed by the vast majority of Afghans. 
According to a United States Department of State estimate made 
in 1987, almost 1 million Afghans had been killed and more than 
5 million had fled the country since the 1979 Soviet invasion. Partly 
in support of the "national reconciliation" process, Gorbachev in 
his Vladivostok speech of July 1986 announced the withdrawal of 
a token number of Soviet forces from Afghanistan. Despite talk 
of reconciliation, a major, but eventually unsuccessful, Soviet- 
Afghan army offensive against the mujahidin was launched in Pak- 
tia Province in mid- 198 7. At the December 1987 Soviet-United 
States summit meeting in Washington, Gorbachev proposed that 
the Soviet Union remove the 1 15,000 Soviet troops in Afghanistan 
on the condition that the United States first cease aid to the muja- 
hidin, a proposal in accord with the Soviet contention that "im- 
perialist" interference was the main reason for the initiation and 
continuation of the Soviet occupation. In April 1988, Afghanistan 
and Pakistan signed accords, with the United States and the Soviet 
Union acting as "guarantors," calling for the withdrawal of Soviet 
military forces from Afghanistan over a nine-month period begin- 
ning on May 15, 1988. The withdrawal was completed in early 
1989. 

India 

A cordial relationship with India that began in the 1950s 
represented the most successful of the Soviet attempts to foster closer 
relations with Third World countries. The relationship began with 
a visit by Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru to the Soviet 
Union in June 1955 and Khrushchev's return trip to India in the 
fall of 1955. While in India, Khrushchev announced that the Soviet 
Union supported Indian sovereignty over the Kashmir region and 
over Portuguese coastal enclaves. 

The Soviet relationship with India rankled the Chinese and con- 
tributed to Sino- Soviet enmity during the Khrushchev period. The 
Soviet Union declared its neutrality during the 1959 border dis- 
pute and the 1962 Sino-Indian war, although the Chinese strong- 
ly objected. The Soviet Union gave India substantial economic and 
military assistance during the Khrushchev period, and by 1960 
India had received more Soviet assistance than China had. This 
disparity became another point of contention in Sino-Soviet rela- 
tions. In 1962 the Soviet Union agreed to transfer technology to 



435 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

coproduce the MiG-21 jet fighter in India, which the Soviet Union 
had earlier denied to China. 

In 1965 the Soviet Union served successfully as peace broker 
between India and Pakistan after an Indian-Pakistani border war. 
The Soviet chairman of the Council of Ministers, Aleksei N. Kosy- 
gin, met with representatives of India and Pakistan and helped them 
negotiate an end to the military conflict over Kashmir. 

In 1971 East Pakistan initiated an effort to secede from its union 
with West Pakistan. India supported the secession and, as a guaran- 
tee against possible Chinese entrance into the conflict on the side 
of West Pakistan, signed a treaty of friendship and cooperation with 
the Soviet Union in August 1971 . In December, India entered the 
conflict and ensured the victory of the secessionists and the estab- 
lishment of the new state of Bangladesh. 

Relations between the Soviet Union and India did not suffer 
much during the rightist Janata Party's coalition government in 
the late 1970s, although India did move to establish better economic 
and military relations with Western countries. To counter these 
efforts by India to diversify its relations, the Soviet Union proffered 
additional weaponry and economic assistance. During the 1980s, 
despite the 1984 assassination by Sikh extremists of Prime Minister 
Indira Gandhi, the mainstay of cordial Indian- Soviet relations, In- 
dia maintained a close relationship with the Soviet Union. Indicat- 
ing the high priority of relations with the Soviet Union in Indian 
foreign policy, the new Indian prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, visited 
the Soviet Union on his first state visit abroad in May 1985 and 
signed two long-term economic agreements with the Soviet Union. 
In turn, Gorbachev's first visit to a Third World state was his meet- 
ing with Gandhi in New Delhi in late 1986. Gorbachev unsuccess- 
fully urged Gandhi to help the Soviet Union set up an Asian 
collective security system. Gorbachev's advocacy of this proposal, 
which had also been made by Brezhnev, was an indication of con- 
tinuing Soviet interest in using close relations with India as a 
means of containing China. With the improvement of Sino-Soviet 
relations in the late 1980s, containing China had less of a priority, 
but close relations with India remained important as an example 
of Gorbachev's new Third World policy. 

Southeast Asia 

Soviet goals in Southeast Asia included the containment of China, 
the introduction and maintenance of Soviet influence, and the 
reduction of United States influence in the region. As of 1989, the 
Soviet leaders had been only partially successful in attaining these 



436 



Foreign Policy 



somewhat contradictory goals and policies. The Soviet acquiescence, 
if not support, for the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia in De- 
cember 1978 resulted in the elimination of the pro-Chinese leader- 
ship of Cambodia. However, the Soviet posture regarding the 
occupation, along with the growing Soviet military presence in Viet- 
nam, alarmed several ASEAN states and led to closer intra- ASEAN 
political, and even military, cooperation and to expanded ASEAN 
contacts with the United States and other Western countries. The 
Soviet Union also unsuccessfully urged the elimination of United 
States bases in the Philippines. However, the Soviet policy of im- 
proving ties with the Ferdinand Marcos regime in 1 986 backfired 
when Marcos was forced from power. 

A Soviet policy of stressing bilateral ties with individual ASEAN 
states, rather than multilateral relations, which would strengthen 
ASEAN as an organization, began to have some success in the late 
1980s. After Gorbachev came to power, bilateral contacts with the 
ASEAN states increased as part of the Soviet leader's revised Third 
World policy, which emphasized relations with the newly industri- 
alized countries, nonaligned states, and other capitalist-oriented states 
and improved contacts with Asian countries in general. In March 
1987, Foreign Minister Shevardnadze visited Australia and Indonesia 
as part of this reorientation, and in late 1988 he visited the Philip- 
pines. In July 1987, Prime Minister Mahathir Bin Mohamad of 
Malaysia visited Moscow, and in May 1988 Prime Minister Prem 
Tinsulanonda of Thailand also visited. 

The major Soviet success in Southeast Asia was the close politi- 
cal, economic, and military ties it established with Vietnam, which 
became a full member of Comecon in 1978. Although economic 
assistance to Vietnam was a heavy drain on the Soviet economy, 
Vietnam provided raw materials and thousands of laborers for work 
on Siberian development projects. Militarily, Cam Ranh Bay was 
the largest Soviet naval base outside the Soviet Union, allowing the 
Soviet Union to project increased power in the South China Sea. 
Politically, Vietnam aligned its foreign policy with that of the Soviet 
Union, and Vietnam was considered by the Soviet Union as a 
"fraternal party state" and as part of the "commonwealth of so- 
cialist states." 

In mid- 1988 Vietnam announced the withdrawal by the end of 
1988 of 50,000 of the 100,000 Vietnamese troops occupying Cam- 
bodia, with all troops to be withdrawn by 1990. This withdrawal, 
publicly endorsed if not implemented at the urging of the Soviet 
Union, allowed the Soviet Union to attempt to improve relations 
with the ASEAN states and China. 



437 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Sub-Saharan Africa 

Although the Comintern previously had made low-level contacts 
with local communist parties, sub-Saharan Africa was an area of 
limited concern to the Soviet Union until Khrushchev's reassess- 
ment of the Third World in the mid-1950s. Although Khrushchev 
initiated economic "show projects" in several African countries, 
Soviet efforts to foster socialism in Africa foundered in the Congo 
in the early 1960s, in Guinea in 1961, and in Kenya in 1965 part- 
ly because the Soviet Union was unable to project military power 
effectively into Africa. 

During the first few years of the Brezhnev period, the amount 
of economic assistance to Africa declined from the levels of the 
Khrushchev period, although it increased greatiy in the mid-1970s. 
During the Brezhnev period, the Soviet ability to project power 
grew, enabling it to take advantage of several opportunities in Africa 
during the 1970s. 

Because of the deteriorating economic situation in the Soviet Union 
in the 1980s, economic assistance to Africa declined. Military as- 
sistance was maintained or increased in some instances in the face 
of insurgencies against so-called revolutionary democracies. Angola, 
Ethiopia, and Mozambique, all of which were fighting insurgen- 
cies, were major recipients of arms throughout the 1980s. 

At the Twenty- Seventh Party Congress, Gorbachev called for 
a reorientation of relations with the Third World. He stressed the 
need to improve relations with the more developed, Western- 
oriented, Third World states while maintaining existing relations 
with other African states. In Africa the Soviet Union pursued closer 
relations with relatively more developed African states such as 
Nigeria and Zimbabwe. Gorbachev also reiterated Soviet support 
for the overthrow of the government of South Africa and support 
for the "frontline" states (states near or bordering South Africa) 
opposing South Africa: Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, 
Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. As part of a Soviet attempt 
to coordinate Soviet policy toward southern Africa, a new office 
of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was created to deal with the front- 
line states. In 1988-89 Soviet hostility toward the South African 
regime softened, and the two countries worked together diplomat- 
ically in resolving regional conflicts and issues such as negotiations 
over the independence of Namibia. 

Angola 

The Soviet Union engaged in a massive airlift of Cuban forces 
into Angola in 1975 to help the Popular Movement for the Liberation 



438 



Foreign Policy 



of Angola (Movimento Popular de Libertacao de Angola — MPLA) 
defeat rival groups attempting to achieve power after the Portuguese 
colonial administration ended. The rival group, the National Union 
for the Total Independence of Angola (Uniao Nacional para a In- 
dependencia Total de Angola — UNITA), continued to oppose the 
MPLA and by the early 1980s controlled almost one-half of An- 
gola's territory and increasingly threatened the central government. 
In both 1985 and 1987, massive Soviet-directed and Cuban-assisted 
MPLA offensives were launched against UNITA in attempts to 
achieve a military solution to the insurgency. Both these offensives 
failed. In December 1988, regional accords were signed setting a 
timetable for Namibian independence and the withdrawal of Cuban 
troops from Angola. The signatories were South Africa, Angola, 
and Cuba, with the United States acting as mediator and the Soviet 
Union as observer of the accords. 

Ethiopia 

In 1977 and 1978, the Soviet Union airlifted large numbers of 
Cuban troops into Ethiopia to help defeat an incursion by Soma- 
lia into the disputed Ogaden region. Somalia had signed a treaty 
of friendship and cooperation with the Soviet Union in 1974 and 
had received large amounts of Soviet arms. The Soviet leadership, 
however, ended this relationship in 1977 and switched support to 
Ethiopia because of Ethiopia's much greater population and eco- 
nomic resources and because of its location on the strait of Bab 
al Mandab, which links the Horn of Africa to inland Africa and 
the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden. During the 1980s, the Soviet 
Union moved toward normalizing relations with Somalia but ap- 
peared to be waiting for a change in regime before attempting to 
greatly improve contacts. 

Mozambique 

In Mozambique the Soviet Union supplied arms to the Front 
for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frente da Libertacao de 
Mozambique — Frelimo) during its 1975 effort to win power, and 
in 1977 the Soviet Union and Mozambique signed a treaty of friend- 
ship and cooperation. In 1977 a disaffected wing of Frelimo and 
other Mozambicans formed the Mozambique National Resistance 
Movement (Movimento Nacional da Resistencia de Mocambique — 
Renamo), which began increasingly successful military operations 
against the Frelimo government. In the late 1980s, the Soviet 
Union stepped up military assistance to the Frelimo government 
in the face of the eroding security situation. The Frelimo govern- 
ment, because of inadequate Soviet military assistance, acted to 



439 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

diversify suppliers by obtaining weaponry and military advisory 
assistance from Britain and Portugal, among others. 

Central America and South America 

Latin America, like sub-Saharan Africa, had been a relatively 
low priority in Soviet foreign policy, although in absolute terms 
interactions between the Soviet Union and Latin America had in- 
creased tremendously since the early 1960s. Until the Khrushchev 
period, Latin America was generally regarded as in the United 
States sphere of influence. The Soviet Union had little interest in 
importing Latin American raw materials or commodities, and most 
Latin American governments, traditionally anticommunist, had 
long resisted the establishment of diplomatic relations with the Soviet 
Union. 

A transformation of the Soviet attitude toward Latin America 
began in 1959 when Fidel Castro overthrew Cuba's long-time dic- 
tator, Fulgencio Batista. Castro gradually turned the island into 
a communist state and developed such close ties with the Soviet 
Union that Cuba was, by 1961, considered by the Soviet Union 
as its first "fraternal party state" in the Western Hemisphere. 

Castro initially advocated armed revolutionary struggle in Latin 
America. However, after armed struggle failed to topple the govern- 
ment of Venezuela in 1965, the Soviet leadership stressed the 
"peaceful road to socialism." This path involved cooperation be- 
tween communist and leftist movements in working for peaceful 
change and electoral victories. The "peaceful road" apparently 
bore fruit in 1970 with the election of Salvador Allende Gossens, 
the candidate of the leftist Popular Unity coalition, as president 
of Chile. Despite Allende 's advocacy of close ties with the Soviet 
Union, the Soviet Union was slow in providing economic assistance 
essential to the survival of the regime, and in the midst of economic 
collapse Allende died in a bloody coup in 1973. His ouster resulted 
in a partial renewal of Soviet support for Castro's position that 
armed force is necessary for the transition to communism. Brezh- 
nev himself conceded at the 1976 Twenty-Fifth Party Congress that 
a "revolution must know how to defend itself." The Soviet Union 
funneled weaponry and economic assistance through Cuba to vari- 
ous insurgent groups and leftist governments in Latin America. 
The Soviet Union used Cuba as a conduit for military, economic, 
and technical assistance to Grenada from 1979 to 1983. The United 
States government claimed that guerrillas operating in El Salvador 
received extensive assistance from Nicaragua, Cuba, Vietnam, and 
Libya and that Nicaragua and Cuba funneled Soviet and East Euro- 
pean materiel to the Salvadoran guerrillas. 



440 



Foreign Policy 



Direct Soviet activities in South America have mostly involved 
diplomacy, trade, culture, and propaganda activities. Peru was the 
only South American state to purchase sizable quantities of mili- 
tary weaponry from the Soviet Union, and for many years about 
125 Soviet military advisers were stationed there. Peru's military 
relationship with the Soviet Union began in 1968, when General 
Juan Velasco Alvarado seized power. In February 1969, Peru es- 
tablished diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, and one month 
after Allende's ouster in Chile in September 1973, the first Soviet 
weapons arrived in Peru. Major transfers occurred after 1976, when 
Peru received fighter-bombers, helicopters, jet fighters, surface- 
to-air missiles, and other relatively sophisticated weaponry. The 
Soviet Union had also been one of Peru's major trade partners, 
with some Peruvian exports being used to pay off Peruvian debt 
to the Soviet Union. Argentina in the 1980s was the Soviet Union's 
second largest trading partner among the noncommunist developing 
countries (India was the largest). In turn, the Soviet Union was 
a major importer of Argentine grain, meat, and wool. 

Some Western analysts have posited a differentiated Soviet policy 
toward Latin America, which stresses military and subversive ac- 
tivities in Central America and diplomatic and economic (state- 
to- state) relations in South America. The range of instruments of 
influence used in Central America and South America, while vary- 
ing in their mix over time, nevertheless indicated that all instru- 
ments, including support for subversive groups and arms shipments 
to amenable governments, had been used in Central America and 
South America in response to available opportunities, indicating 
shifting emphases but a basically undifferentiated policy toward 
Latin America. The main policy goal in Soviet relations with La- 
tin America was to decrease United States influence in the region 
by encouraging the countries of the region either to develop close 
ties to the Soviet Union or to adopt a nonaligned, "anti-imperialist" 
foreign policy. The Soviet Union was cautious in pursuing this goal, 
seeking to maintain a low public profile in its relations, and was 
hesitant to devote major economic or military resources to coun- 
tries in the region, with the exception of Cuba. As part of the 
reorientation of Soviet Third World policy toward better relations 
with Western-oriented Third World states, Gorbachev emphasized 
the establishment of better trade and political relations with several 
Latin American states. Evidence of this new emphasis was Gor- 
bachev's visit to Cuba in April 1989 and Foreign Minister Shevard- 
nadze's visits to Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay in 1986- 
87. While in Cuba, Gorbachev and Castro signed a friendship and 
cooperation treaty, indicating continued Soviet support to Cuba. 



441 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

The Soviet Union and Nuclear Arms Control 

The Soviet Union has championed arms control, in the guise 
of its extreme variant — universal and complete disarmament — 
since the founding of the Soviet state. Lenin stated that worldwide 
disarmament could occur after the victory of socialism but that be- 
fore that time it would be a tactical device to foster pacifism in the 
capitalist world. 

The Soviet Union has proposed various nuclear disarmament plans 
since the development of nuclear weapons during World War II. 
In 1946 the Soviet Union rejected the Acheson-Lilienthal-Baruch 
Plan proposed by the United States (calling for international con- 
trol of nuclear weapons) and counterproposed that all nuclear 
weapons be destroyed. The United States rejected this proposal 
because of lack of adequate verification provisions. The Soviet 
Union continued to push for total nuclear disarmament, launch- 
ing the worldwide " Stockholm Appeal" propaganda campaign in 
1950. 

The Soviet Union did not seriously contemplate nuclear disar- 
mament or arms reductions while it was in the process of develop- 
ing and deploying nuclear weapons in the 1940s, 1950s, and most 
of the 1960s. During the early to mid-1960s, however, the United 
States and the Soviet Union agreed to ban nuclear and other 
weapons from Antarctica and nuclear weapons tests in the at- 
mosphere, outer space, and under water (see Objectives in Space, 
ch. 17). Except for these tentative measures, during the 1960s the 
Soviet Union built up its strategic nuclear armaments. By the late 
1960s, the Soviet Union had reached a rough parity with the United 
States in some categories of strategic weaponry and at that time 
offered to negotiate limits on strategic nuclear weapons deploy- 
ments. Also, the Soviet Union wished to constrain American de- 
ployment of an antiballistic missile (ABM) system and retain the 
ability to place multiple independently-targetable re-entry vehicles 
(MIRVs) on missiles (see Arms Control and Military Objectives, 
ch. 17). 

The Soviet- American Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), 
initially delayed by the United States in protest of the August 1968 
Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, began in November 1969 
in Helsinki. The Interim Agreement on the Limitation of Stra- 
tegic Offensive Arms, signed in Moscow in May 1972, froze ex- 
isting levels of deployment of intercontinental ballistic missiles 
(ICBMs) and regulated the growth of submarine-launched ballis- 
tic missiles (SLBMs). As part of the SALT process, the Anti-Ballistic 



442 




[I 



President Ronald W. Reagan and General Secretary Mikhail S. Gorbachev 
signing the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty 
in Washington, December 1987 
Courtesy Bill Fitz-Patrick 

Missile Treaty was also signed, allowing two ABM deployment 
areas in each country (a protocol to the treaty later reduced the 
number of deployment areas to one). 

The SALT agreements were generally considered in the West 
as having codified the concept of mutual assured destruction, or 
deterrence. Both the United States and the Soviet Union recog- 
nized their mutual vulnerability to massive destruction, no matter 
which state launched nuclear weapons first. A second SALT agree- 
ment was signed in June 1979 in Vienna. Among other provisions, 
it placed an aggregate ceiling on ICBM and SLBM launchers. The 
second SALT agreement was never ratified by the United States 
Senate, however, in large part because of the Soviet invasion of 
Afghanistan in December 1979. Both the Soviet Union and the 
United States nonetheless pledged to abide by the provisions of the 
agreement. Follow-on talks, termed the Strategic Arms Reduction 
Talks (START), began in June 1982 but as of 1989 had not resulted 
in agreement. 

In January 1986, Gorbachev announced a three-stage proposal 
for nuclear disarmament. His plan called for initial strategic nuclear 
weapons cuts of 50 percent and the banning of space-based de- 
fenses, followed by second- and third-stage cuts that would include 

443 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

elimination of British and French nuclear arsenals. He also agreed 
to the United States position on the total elimination of intermediate- 
range nuclear forces (INF) in Europe and indicated a new open- 
ness to consideration of wide-ranging verification procedures. Parts 
of the proposal were subsequendy mentioned in Gorbachev's po- 
litical report to the Twenty- Seventh Party Congress in February 
1986. Although the proposal as a whole was rejected by the Western 
nuclear powers, elements of the proposal were included in the 
START negotiations and in the final round of the INF negotia- 
tions, which had begun in 1981. 

In November 1981, the Reagan administration proposed the 
elimination of intermediate (1 ,000 to 5,500 kilometers) and short- 
er range (500 to 1 ,000 kilometers) ballistic and cruise missiles from 
Europe and Asia. The Soviet Union rejected this proposal and at- 
tempted to influence public opinion in Western Europe to prevent 
the NATO deployment of missiles that would counter the Soviet 
SS-4s, SS-5s, and SS-20s targeted on Western Europe. Accord- 
ing to some Western analysts, the Soviet Union hoped that through 
manipulation of European and American public opinion Western 
governments would be forced to cancel the deployments, a policy 
that the Soviet Union had successfully used in the late 1970s to 
force cancellation of NATO plans to deploy enhanced radiation 
warheads (neutron bombs). The Soviet Union walked out of the 
INF and other arms control negotiations in November 1983 as a 
result of the NATO deployment of countervailing intermediate- 
range nuclear forces. The Soviet Union returned to the INF negoti- 
ations around the time that Gorbachev became general secretary. 
Negotiations proceeded relatively quickly and resulted in the con- 
clusion of the INF Treaty signed in Washington in December 1987. 
The INF Treaty called for the elimination of all American and 
Soviet INF and shorter-range nuclear forces from Europe and Asia 
within three years (see Soviet-United States Relations, this ch.). 
The treaty was ratified by the United States Senate and the Supreme 
Soviet in May 1988. 

On December 7, 1988, Gorbachev made a major foreign policy 
speech to the UN General Assembly, announcing arms reductions 
that, if fully implemented, would reduce military tensions between 
the Soviet Union and the United States and between the Warsaw 
Pact and NATO. He pledged that the Soviet Union would unilater- 
ally cut its armed forces by 500,000 troops over a two-year period 
and would significantiy cut its deployments of conventional arms, 
including over 10,000 tanks. He also announced the withdrawal 
of six tank divisions from East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Hun- 
gary by 1991. In early 1989, Gorbachev also announced cuts in 



444 



Foreign Policy 



the military budget, and several Warsaw Pact states also announced 
reductions in their armed forces and military budgets. 

The Soviet Union and the United Nations 

The Soviet Union has taken an active role in the UN and other 
major international and regional organizations. At the behest of 
the United States, the Soviet Union took a role in the establish- 
ment of the UN in 1945. The Soviet Union insisted that there be 
veto rights in the Security Council and that alterations in the Char- 
ter of the UN be unanimously approved by the five permanent 
members (Britain, China, France, the Soviet Union, and the United 
States). A major watershed in Soviet UN policy occurred in Janu- 
ary 1950, when Soviet representatives boycotted UN functions in 
support of the seating of China as a permanent member of the Secu- 
rity Council. In the absence of the Soviet representatives, the UN 
Security Council was able to vote for the intervention of UN mili- 
tary forces in what would become the Korean War. The Soviet 
Union subsequendy returned to various UN bodies in August 1950. 
This return marked the beginning of a new policy of active partic- 
ipation in international and regional organizations. 

For many years, the Western powers played a guiding role in 
UN deliberations, but by the 1960s many former colonies had been 
granted independence and had joined the UN. These states, which 
became the majority in the General Assembly and other bodies, 
were increasingly receptive to Soviet "anti-imperialist" appeals. 
By the 1970s, the UN deliberations had generally become increas- 
ingly hostile toward the West and toward the United States in par- 
ticular, as evidenced by pro-Soviet and anti-United States voting 
trends in the General Assembly. Although the Soviet Union benefit- 
ed from and encouraged these trends, it was not mainly responsi- 
ble for them. Rather, the trends were largely a result of the growing 
debate over the redistribution of the world's wealth between the 
"have" and "have-not" states. 

In general, the Soviet Union used the UN as a propaganda fo- 
rum and encouraged pro-Soviet positions among the nonaligned 
countries. The Soviet Union did not, however, achieve total sup- 
port in the UN for its foreign policy positions. The Soviet Union 
and Third World states often agreed that "imperialism" caused 
and continued to maintain the disparities in the world distribu- 
tion of wealth. They disagreed, however, on the proper level of 
Soviet aid to the Third World, with the Soviet Union refusing to 
grant sizable aid for development. Also, the Soviet Union encoun- 
tered opposition to its occupation of Afghanistan and the Viet- 
namese occupation of Cambodia and got little support (as evidenced 



445 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

by Third World abstentions) for its 1987 proposal on the creation 
of a "Comprehensive System of International Peace and Security." 

The Soviet Union in the late 1980s belonged to most of the 
specialized agencies of the UN. It resisted joining various agricul- 
tural, food, and humanitarian organizations of the UN because 
it eschewed multilateral food and humanitarian relief efforts. During 
1986 Western media reported that East European and Asian com- 
munist countries allied with the Soviet Union received more de- 
velopment assistance from the UN than they and the Soviet Union 
contributed. This revelation belied communist states' rhetorical sup- 
port in the UN for the establishment of a New International Eco- 
nomic Order for the transfer of wealth from the rich Northern 
Hemisphere to the poor Southern Hemisphere nations. Partly be- 
cause of ongoing Third World criticism of the Soviet record of 
meager economic assistance to the Third World and of Soviet con- 
tributions to UN agencies, in September 1987 the Soviet Union 
announced that it would pay some portion of its arrears to the UN. 
This policy change also came at a time of financial hardship in the 
UN caused partly by the decision of the United States to withhold 
contributions pending cost-cutting efforts in the UN. 

During the Gorbachev period, the Soviet Union made several 
suggestions for increasing UN involvement in the settlement of su- 
perpower and regional problems and conflicts. Although as of 1989 
these suggestions had not been implemented, they constituted new 
initiatives in Soviet foreign policy and represented a break with 
the stolid, uncooperative nature of past Soviet foreign policy. While 
the basic character of Soviet foreign policy had not yet changed, 
the new flexibility in solving regional problems in Afghanistan, An- 
gola, and Cambodia, as well as problems in the superpower rela- 
tionship, indicated a pragmatic commitment to the lessening of 
world tensions. 

* * * 

Information on Soviet ideology and general foreign policy orien- 
tations can be found in Erik P. Hoffmann and Frederic J. Fleron's 
The Conduct of Soviet Foreign Policy; William Welch's American Im- 
ages of Soviet Foreign Policy; and William A. Gamson and Andre 
Modigliani's Untangling the Cold War. Institutions and personnel 
involved in the formation and execution of Soviet foreign policy 
are discussed in Robbin F. Laird and Erik P. Hoffmann's Soviet 
Foreign Policy in a Changing World; Seweryn Bialer's The Domestic Con- 
text of Soviet Foreign Policy; Vernon S. Aspaturian's Process and Power 
in Soviet Foreign Policy; and Jan F. Triska and David D. Finley's 



446 



Foreign Policy 



Soviet Foreign Policy. Soviet foreign policy toward various regions 
of the world is treated in Robbin F. Laird's Soviet Foreign Policy; 
Richard F. Staar's USSR Foreign Policies after Detente; Seweryn Bi- 
aler's The Soviet Paradox; Adam B. Ulam's Expansion and Coexistence, 
The Rivals, and Dangerous Relations; and Alvin Z. Rubinstein's Soviet 
Foreign Policy since World War II. Regional focuses on the Third 
World include Jerry F. Hough's The Struggle for the Third World; 
Andrzej Korbonski and Francis Fukuyama's The Soviet Union and 
the Third World; and Carol R. Saivetz and Sylvia Woodby's Soviet- 
Third World Relations. Soviet foreign policy focusing on specific 
regions is analyzed in Christopher D. Jones's Soviet Influence in Eastern 
Europe; Herbert J. Ellison's Soviet Policy Toward Western Europe; 
Donald S. Zagoria's Soviet Policy in East Asia; Ray S. Cline, James 
Arnold Miller, and Roger E. Kanet's Asia in Soviet Global Strategy; 
Ramesh Thakur and Carlyle A. Thayer's The Soviet Union as an 
Asian Pacific Power; Cole Blasier's The Giant's Rival; Alvin Z. Rubin- 
stein's Soviet Policy Toward Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan; and Robert 
O. Freedman's Soviet Policy Toward the Middle East since 1970. (For 
further information and complete citations, see Bibliography.) 



447 



i 




Chapter 11. Economic Structure and Policy 



Economists discussing economic plans 



THE SOVIET UNION OF THE 1980s had the largest centrally 
directed economy in the world. The regime established its economic 
priorities through central planning, a system under which adminis- 
trative decisions rather than the market determined resource allo- 
cation and prices. 

Since the Bolshevik Revolution of 1 9 1 7 , the country has grown 
from a largely underdeveloped peasant society with minimal in- 
dustry to become the second largest industrial power in the world. 
According to Soviet statistics, the country's share in world indus- 
trial production grew from 4 percent to 20 percent between 1913 
and 1980. Although many Western analysts considered these claims 
to be inflated, the Soviet achievement remained remarkable. Re- 
covering from the calamitous events of World War II , the coun- 
try 's economy had maintained a continuous though uneven rate 
of growth. Living standards, although still modest for most inhabi- 
tants by Western standards, had improved, and Soviet citizens of 
the late 1980s had a measure of economic security. 

Although these past achievements were impressive, in the mid- 
1980s Soviet leaders faced many problems. Since the 1970s, the 
growth rate had slowed substantially. Extensive economic develop- 
ment (see Glossary), based on vast inputs of materials and labor, 
was no longer possible; yet the productivity of Soviet assets remained 
low compared with other major industrialized countries. Product 
quality needed improvement. Soviet leaders faced a fundamental 
dilemma: the strong central controls that had traditionally guided 
economic development had failed to promote the creativity and 
productivity urgently needed in a highly developed, modern econ- 
omy. 

Conceding the weaknesses of their past approaches in solving 
new problems, the leaders of the late 1980s were seeking to mold 
a program of economic reform to galvanize the economy. The Basic 
Directions for the Economic and Social Development of the USSR for 
1986-1990 and for the Period to the Year 2000, a report to the Twenty- 
Seventh Party Congress in March 1986, spoke of a "burden of 
the shortcomings that had been piling up over a long period, ' ' which 
required "radical changes, a profound restructuring." The leader- 
ship, headed by General Secretary Mikhail S. Gorbachev, was ex- 
perimenting with solutions to economic problems with an openness 
(glasnost — see Glossary) never before seen in the history of the econ- 
omy. One method for improving productivity appeared to be a 



451 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

strengthening of the role of market forces. Yet reforms in which 
market forces assumed a greater role would signify a lessening of 
authority and control by the planning hierarchy. 

Assessing developments in the economy, both past and present, 
remains difficult for Western observers. The country contains enor- 
mous economic and regional disparities. Yet analyzing statistical 
data broken down by region is a cumbersome process. Further- 
more, Soviet statistics themselves may be of limited use to Western 
analysts because they are not directly comparable with those used 
in Western countries. The differing statistical concepts, valuations, 
and procedures used by communist and noncommunist economists 
make even the most basic data, such as the relative productivity 
of various sectors, difficult to assess. Most Western analysts, and 
some Soviet economists, doubt the accuracy of the published statis- 
tics, recognizing that the industrial growth figures tend to be in- 
flated. 

Economic Structure 

The economy of the Soviet Union differs significantly from mar- 
ket economies; the country's massive and diverse economic 
resources are largely state owned. The central government con- 
trols directly or indirectly many aspects of the labor force, the re- 
tail and wholesale distribution system, and the financial system. 

Nature of the National Economy 

The Constitution of 1977 declares that the foundation of the econ- 
omy is " socialist ownership of the means of production" (see The 
1977 Constitution, ch. 8). The Constitution recognizes two forms 
of socialist ownership: state ownership, in which all members of 
society are said to participate, and various types of collective or 
cooperative ownership. According to Marxist- Leninist (see Glos- 
sary) theory, the former is more advanced, and the Constitution 
calls for its expansion. It is the most extensive form of ownership 
in the economy, incorporating all major industrial entities: the bank- 
ing, transportation, and communication systems; a majority of trade 
and public services; and much of the agricultural sector. In the 
late 1980s, collective ownership was found primarily in agricul- 
ture, the small workshops of craftspeople, and some retail trade 
and services. In 1989 a law was passed allowing an increase in the 
number and kinds of cooperatives. 

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and, as an 
adjunct of it, the government set goals and chose priorities for 
the economy. Traditionally, the government has determined eco- 
nomic policy in considerable detail through its planning agencies 



452 



Economic Structure and Policy 



at various levels and has issued specific instructions to individual 
economic units concerning quantity and type of production expected 
of them, wage levels and incentive funds permitted, and, to a large 
extent, investment policies. Control of the economy has been ex- 
erted through a hierarchy of planning agencies that interact with 
appropriate government and party organs to devise and implement 
policy to achieve these goals. Various past reform efforts have al- 
tered the specific functions and assignments of the components of 
the economy, but the basic hierarchical structure has remained in- 
tact since its inception during the 1920s (see Planning Process, this 
ch.). 

All-union (see Glossary) planning and control for each major 
sector of the economy is handled by relevant branch ministries, 
subordinate to the Council of Ministers and aided by a variety of 
planning agencies (see Administrative Organs, ch. 8). Between the 
ministries and the functioning enterprises (see Glossary), a vari- 
ety of bodies, such as combines (see Glossary), trusts (see Glos- 
sary), and production associations (groups of formerly separate 
enterprises) join together entities representing aspects of produc- 
tion in a given area of the economy. On this level, periodic restruc- 
turings have been attempted to achieve greater efficiency (see 
Reforming the Planning System, this ch.). 

In 1985 industry, composed of about 45,000 enterprises and 
production associations, accounted for 45.6 percent of net mate- 
rial product (see Glossary), according to official statistics. The 
agricultural sector, organized into collective farms (see Glossary) 
and state farms (see Glossary), produced 19.4 percent of net material 
product. Transportation and communications accounted for 10.7 
percent, and the distribution system accounted for 18.2 percent 
(see Retail and Wholesale Distribution System, this ch.). 

The 1977 Constitution permits individuals to be self-employed, 
with certain restrictions. Until the late 1980s, however, the authori- 
ties strongly discouraged the practice. Citizens may own personal 
property, such as a dwelling or an automobile, and may sell this 
property as "used" merchandise or bequeath it as they choose. 
They may also sell products they have themselves made. Tradi- 
tionally, they have not been permitted to act as middlemen for profit 
or to hire the labor of other citizens for personal gain, i.e., to en- 
gage in private enterprise as it is understood in the West. Neverthe- 
less, alongside the official economy a "second economy" has long 
flourished, made up of private individuals offering goods and ser- 
vices to consumers, who have traditionally been inadequately served 
by the state services sector. Such activities have included those that 
were simply private, illegal, or of questionable legality. 



453 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

The existence of many illicit business activities, operating out- 
side state controls, was freely admitted and deplored by authori- 
ties and the official press of the 1980s. Upon assuming power in 
March 1985, Gorbachev adopted a new approach to the problem. 
In a major departure from past policies, on May 1, 1987, it be- 
came legal for individuals to go into a variety of business activities 
on their own or in cooperation with others (see The Twelfth Five- 
Year Plan, 1986-90, this ch.). 

Labor 

In 1985 the Soviet work force totaled about 130.3 million per- 
sons. According to official statistics, almost 20 percent of these em- 
ployees worked in agriculture and forestry, while slightly more than 
38 percent worked in industry and construction. Just under 10 per- 
cent were employed in transportation and communications. As in 
other industrialized countries, the percentage of the total work force 
employed in distribution and other services had increased. The shift 
had been more gradual than in Western countries, however. In 
1985 just under 32 percent of the work force was employed in dis- 
tribution and other service jobs. Officially, the government did not 
acknowledge the existence of unemployment. However, Western 
analysts estimated that about 2 percent of the labor force might 
be unemployed at a given time, most of this being short-term un- 
employment. 

The working-age population was officially defined as males from 
sixteen to fifty-nine years old and females from sixteen to fifty-four 
years old. As in other industrialized countries, the work force was 
gradually aging. Precise information concerning the number of 
pension-age workers employed either full time or part time was 
not available. However, Western analysts expected such workers 
to account for fully 12 percent of the labor force by the year 2000. 
A striking feature of the work force was the prominent role played 
by women, who accounted for some 49 percent of the work force 
in the mid-1980s. 

The growth rate of the labor force had declined during plan peri- 
ods in the 1970s and 1980s, and this situation was expected to im- 
prove only slightly during the 1990s (see Age and Sex Structure, 
ch. 3). Western analysts predicted that the work force would number 
just over 171 million persons by the year 2000. Population growth 
in general had slowed markedly in the European part of the coun- 
try but remained high in the more rural Central Asian areas. This 
fact was a source of concern to economic planners because job skills 
were less plentiful in the non-European areas of the country. In 
view of the lower birth rates of recent decades and the aging of 



454 



People lining up for scarce consumer goods in a typical Soviet scene 

Courtesy Jonathan Tetzlaff 

the work force, leaders called for improvements in labor produc- 
tivity through automation and mechanization of work processes 
and through elimination of surplus workers in enterprises. Lead- 
ers also expressed concern about the deficient education and training 
of many in the work force. Although the education system stressed 
vocational and technical training, and many industrial enterprises 
offered additional specialized training for workers after they joined 
the labor force, the economy suffered from a labor shortage, par- 
ticularly for skilled personnel (see Pedagogy and Planning, ch. 6). 

Labor was not directly allocated. Although compulsory labor, 
involving the transfer of entire groups of workers, had been a sig- 
nificant tool of industrial development during the dictatorship of 
Joseph V. Stalin (the precise extent of the practice has not been 
determined with certainty), its use had greatly diminished in sub- 
sequent years and by the 1970s was no longer a major factor in 
economic activity. The inhospitable terrain and remote location 
of many parts of the Soviet Union impeded the flow of skilled la- 
bor to areas targeted for development outside the western and 
southeastern areas of the country. Wage differentials, varying ac- 
cording to region, industry, and occupation, were used to attract 
employees to the tasks and locations for which there was a labor 
need. In large cities, where the presence of amenities and a variety 



455 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

of economic activities attracted workers in excess of actual employ- 
ment opportunities, residence permits were used to limit the in- 
flux of additional population. 

Within the labor force as a whole, trade union membership was 
above 90 percent nationwide in the 1980s. Labor unions had a vari- 
ety of functions: administering state social funds for the sick, dis- 
abled, and elderly and for day care; sponsoring vocational training 
and other educational services, such as libraries and clubs; and par- 
ticipating in aspects of enterprise management. Unions also acted 
as interpreters of party policy for the workers. Union leaders were 
expected to work to improve discipline and morale, educate the 
work force, and help to raise productivity. They did not bargain 
with management over wages or working conditions. 

Retail and Wholesale Distribution System 

In the mid-1980s, about 8 percent of the labor force worked in 
the distribution system. For the most part, internal trade took place 
in state retail outlets in urban areas and in cooperatives in rural 
areas. Prices in state and cooperative outlets were set by the State 
Committee on Prices and were determined by many considerations 
other than supply and demand. Both rural and urban inhabitants 
could also use "collective farm markets," where peasants, acting 
both individually and in groups representing collective farms, sold 
their produce direcdy to consumers. Here prices fluctuated accord- 
ing to supply and demand. Similar arrangements existed for non- 
edible products, although in a less developed form, as could be seen 
in a variety of secondhand stores and flea markets. Although such 
enterprises specialized in used items, they also sold new products, 
again on a supply-and-demand basis. 

With regard to many types of consumer goods, the country's 
economy was "taut," that is, enterprises carried low inventories 
and reserves. Demand for good-quality items frequently exceeded 
supply. In effect, some goods and services, such as housing, were 
rationed as a result of their scarcity. In addition, a system of spe- 
cial stores existed for use by privileged individuals and foreigners. 
These stores could be found in major population centers but were 
not highly publicized. They contained good-quality items, both food 
and nonedible goods, in scarce supply. Moreover, a second econ- 
omy had long flourished to supply consumer goods and services, 
such as repair work and health care, for which the official retail 
distribution system could not meet consumer demand. Observers 
expected that as a result of the reforms of the 1980s, a growing 
variety of goods and services would be distributed through the 



456 



Economic Structure and Policy 



expanding private sector of the economy (see The Twelfth Five- 
Year Plan, 1986-90, this ch.). 

Distribution on the wholesale level took place largely through 
state-directed allocation, in conjunction with the planning process. 
Heavy industry, particularly producer goods, and the defense in- 
dustry received highest priority. Reforms of the mid-1980s promised 
to decentralize this system somewhat, with users of materials free 
in many cases to make purchasing contracts with the suppliers of 
their choice. Western observers were uncertain as to the impact 
such an alteration would have on the supply system as a whole. 

In 1984 per capita consumption was about one-third that of the 
United States. It was about half that of France and the Federal 
Republic of Germany (West Germany) and roughly two- thirds that 
of Japan. Soviet levels of consumption were below those of some 
of the country's allies in Eastern Europe as well. 

Financial System 

The ruble, consisting of 100 kopeks, is the unit of currency. In 
the mid-1980s, the ruble (for value of the ruble — see Glossary) was 
a purely internal currency unit, and the government fixed its rate 
of exchange with foreign currencies somewhat arbitrarily. The State 
Bank (Gosudarstvennyi bank — Gosbank) issued currency and es- 
tablished its official gold content and thus its exchange rate with 
foreign currencies. The real value of the ruble for purchase of 
domestic consumer goods in comparison with the United States 
dollar was very difficult to determine because the Soviet price struc- 
ture, traditionally established by the State Committee on Prices, 
differed from that of a market economy. 

The banking system was owned and managed by the govern- 
ment. Gosbank was the central bank of the country and also its 
only commercial bank. It handled all significant banking transac- 
tions, including the issuing and control of currency and credit, 
management of the gold reserve, and oversight of all transactions 
among economic enterprises. Because it held enterprise accounts, 
the bank could monitor their financial performance. It had main 
offices in each union republic (see Glossary) and many smaller 
branches and savings banks throughout the country. The banking 
system also included the Foreign Economic Activity Bank and the 
All-Union Capital Investment Bank. The latter bank provided cap- 
ital investment funds for all branches of the economy except agricul- 
ture, which was handled by Gosbank. 

Because the banking system was highly centralized, it formed 
an integral part of the management of the economy. The Minis- 
try of Finance had an important role to play in the economic system, 



457 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

for it established financial plans to control the procurement and 
use of the country's financial resources. It managed the budget in 
accordance with the wishes of central planners. The budget had 
traditionally allocated most of the country's investment resources 
(see Tools of Control, this ch.). The reforms of the mid-1980s, 
however, required enterprises to rely to a greater extent on their 
own financial resources rather than on the central budget. These 
reforms also called for the creation of several new banks to finance 
industrial undertakings, ending the monopoly of Gosbank. Enter- 
prises would seek and receive credit from a variety of banks. 

Citizens could maintain personal savings accounts and, begin- 
ning in 1987, checking accounts. These accounts, initially limited 
to the Russian Republic, were offered by the newly formed Labor 
Savings and Consumer Credit Bank. Over the years, personal sav- 
ings accounts had accumulated massive amounts of money, grow- 
ing from 1.9 billion rubles in 1950 to 156.5 billion rubles in 1980. 
The savings represented excess purchasing power, probably the 
result of repressed inflation and shortages of quality consumer 
goods. 

Economic Planning and Control 

In the Soviet Union of the 1980s, the basic economic task of allo- 
cating scarce resources to competing objectives was accomplished 
primarily through a centrally directed planning apparatus rather 
than through the interplay of market forces. During the decades 
following the Bolshevik Revolution and especially under Stalin, a 
complex system of planning and control had developed, in which 
the state managed virtually all production activity. In the mid- and 
late 1980s, however, economic reforms sponsored by Gorbachev 
were introducing significant changes in the traditional system. 

Planning Process 

Economic planning, according to Marxist-Leninist doctrine, was 
a form of economic management by the state, indispensable both 
during the transition from capitalism to socialism (see Glossary) 
and in a socialist society. Soviet economic theorists maintained that 
planning was based on a profound knowledge and application of 
objective socialist economic laws and that it was independent of 
the personal will and desires of individuals. The most general of 
these laws, commonly referred to as the basic law of socialism, de- 
fined the aim of economic production as the fullest satisfaction of 
the constandy rising material and cultural requirements of the popu- 
lation, using advanced technology to achieve continued growth and 
improvement of production. Centralized planning was presented 



458 



* serves as many as 350, 000 customers each day. 

Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 



459 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

by its proponents as the conscious application of economic laws 
to benefit the people through effective use of all natural resources 
and productive forces. 

The regime established production targets and prices and allo- 
cated resources, codifying these decisions in a comprehensive plan 
or set of plans. Using CPSU directives concerning major economic 
goals, planning authorities formulated short-term and long-term 
plans for meeting specific targets in virtually all spheres of economic 
activity. These production plans were supplemented by compre- 
hensive plans for the supply of materials, equipment, labor, and 
finances to the producing sector; for the procurement of agricul- 
tural products by the government; and for the distribution of food 
and manufactured products to the population. Economic plans had 
the force of law. Traditionally, they had been worked out down 
to the level of the individual economic enterprise, where they were 
reflected in a set of output goals and performance indicators that 
management was expected to maintain. 

Operationally, short-range planning was the most important 
aspect of the planning process for production and resource alloca- 
tion. Annual plans underlay the basic operation of the system. They 
covered one calendar year and encompassed the entire economy. 
Targets were set at the central level for the overall rate of growth 
of the economy, the volume and structure of the domestic product, 
the use of raw materials and labor and their distribution by sector 
and region, and the volume and structure of exports and imports. 
Annual plans were broken down into quarterly and monthly plans, 
which served as commands and blueprints for the day-to-day oper- 
ation of industrial and other economic enterprises and organizations. 

The five-year plan provided continuity and direction by inte- 
grating the yearly plans into a longer time frame. Although the 
five-year plan was duly enacted into law, it contained a series of 
guidelines rather than a set of direct orders. Periods covered by 
the five-year plans coincided with those covered by the party con- 
gresses (see Party Congress, ch. 7; table 30, Appendix A). At each 
congress, the party leadership presented the targets for the next 
five-year plan. Thus each plan had the approval of the most 
authoritative body of the country's leading political institution. 

Long-term planning covered fifteen years or more. It delineated 
principal directions of economic development and specified the way 
the economy could meet the desired goals. 

As in other areas of leadership, so in economic policy matters 
it was the Central Committee of the CPSU and, more specifically, 
its Politburo that set basic guidelines for planning (see Central Com- 
mittee; Politburo, ch. 7). The planning apparatus of the government 



460 



Economic Structure and Policy 



was headed by the Council of Ministers and, under it, the State 
Planning Committee (Gosudarstvennyi planovyi komitet — Gos- 
plan). This agency, made up of a large number of councils, com- 
missions, governmental officials, and specialists, was assisted by 
the State Committee for Statistics (Gosudarstvennyi komitet po 
statistike — Goskomstat). It took plans developed by the city coun- 
cils, republic legislatures, and regional conferences and incorpo- 
rated them into a master plan for the nation. It also supervised 
the operation of all the plans. Gosplan combined the broad eco- 
nomic goals set forth by the Council of Ministers with data sup- 
plied by lower administrative levels regarding the current state of 
the economy in order to work out, through trial and error, a set 
of control figures. The plan stipulated the major aspects of eco- 
nomic activity in each economic sector and in each republic or 
region of the country. Gosplan was also responsible for ensuring 
a correct balance among the different branches of the economy, 
speeding the growth of the national income, and raising the level 
of efficiency in production. 

The method used by Gosplan to achieve internally consistent 
plans, both in a sectoral and in a regional context, was called the 
system of material balances. No clear exposition of this method 
had been published. The system essentially consisted of preparing 
balance sheets in which available material, labor, and financial 
resources were listed as assets and plan requirements as liabilities. 
The task of planners was to balance resources and requirements 
to ensure that the necessary inputs were provided for the planned 
output. To reduce this task to manageable proportions, central 
authorities specified detailed output goals, investment projects, and 
supply plans for only key branches of the economy. The rest of 
the plan was developed only to the extent needed to ensure achieve- 
ment of the main goals. 

Among operational organizations participating in the planning 
process, a major role belonged to the State Committee for Mate- 
rial and Technical Supply. This agency shared with Gosplan the 
controls over the allocation of essential materials and equipment. 
Other operational agencies included the State Committee for Con- 
struction, which played an important part in industrial investment 
planning and housing construction; the State Committee for Labor 
and Social Problems; and the State Committee for Science and 
Technology, which prepared proposals for the introduction of new 
technology. Finally, the Academy of Sciences (see Glossary) helped 
to develop a scientific basis for optimal planning and accounting 
methods. 



461 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

When the control figures had been established by Gosplan, eco- 
nomic ministries drafted plans within their jurisdictions and directed 
the planning by subordinate enterprises. The control figures were 
sent in disaggregated form downward through the planning hier- 
archy to production and industrial associations (various groupings 
of related enterprises) or the territorial production complex (see 
Glossary) for progressively more detailed elaboration. Individual 
enterprises at the base of the planning pyramid were called upon 
to develop the most detailed plans covering all aspects of their oper- 
ations. In agriculture, individual collective farms and state farms 
worked under the supervision of local party committees. The role 
of the farms in planning, however, was more circumscribed. 

At this point, as the individual enterprise formulated its detailed 
draft production plans, the flow of information was reversed. Rank- 
and-file workers as well as managers could participate in the plan- 
ning process on the enterprise level; according to Soviet reports, 
approximately 110 million citizens took part in discussions of the 
draft guidelines for the 1986-90 period and long-term planning for 
the 1986-2000 period. The draft plans of the enterprises were sent 
back up through the planning hierarchy for review, adjustment, 
and integration. This process entailed intensive bargaining, with 
top authorities pressing for maximum and, at times, unrealizable 
targets and enterprises seeking assignments that they could reason- 
ably expect to fulfill or even overfulfill. Ultimate review and revi- 
sion of the draft plans by Gosplan and approval of a final all-union 
plan by the Council of Ministers, the CPSU, and the Supreme 
Soviet were followed by another downward flow of information, 
this time with amended and approved plans containing specific tar- 
gets for each economic entity to the level of the enterprise. 

A parallel system for planning existed in each union republic 
and each autonomous republic (see Glossary). The state planning 
committees in the union republics were subject to the jurisdiction 
of both the councils of ministers in the union republics and Gosplan. 
They drafted plans for all enterprises under the jurisdiction of the 
union republics and recommended plans for enterprises subordi- 
nated to union-republic ministries (see Glossary) and located on 
their territory. The regional system also included planning agen- 
cies created for several major economic regions, which were respon- 
sible either to Gosplan or to a state planning committee in a union 
republic. Autonomous republics had planning systems similar to 
those of union republics. 

Advocates of the centrally planned economy (CPE) argued that 
it had four important advantages. First, the regime could har- 
ness the economy to serve its political and economic objectives. 



462 



Gas station between Moscow and Smolensk, Russian Republic 

Courtesy Jonathan Tetzlaff 



Satisfaction of consumer demand, for example, could be limited 
in favor of greater investment in basic industry or channeled into 
desired patterns, e.g., reliance on public transportation rather than 
on private automobiles. Centralized management could take into 
account long-term needs for development and disregard consumer 
desires for items that it considered frivolous. With a centralized 
system, it was possible to implement programs for the common 
good, such as pollution controls, construction of industrial infra- 
structure, and preservation of parkland. Second, in theory CPEs 
could make continuous, optimal use of all available resources, both 
human and material. Neither unemployment nor idle plant capacity 
would exist beyond minimal levels, and the economy would de- 
velop in a stable manner, unimpeded by inflation or recession. In- 
dustry would benefit from economies of scale and avoid duplication 
of capacity. Third, CPEs could serve social rather than individual 
ends; under such a system, the leadership could distribute rewards, 
whether wages or perquisites, according to the social value of the 
service performed, not according to the vagaries of supply and 
demand on an open market. Finally, proponents argued that abo- 
lition of most forms of property income, coupled with public own- 
ership of the means of production, promoted work attitudes that 
enhanced team effort and conscientious attention to tasks at 



463 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

hand; laborers could feel that they were working for their own 
benefit and would not need strict disciplinary supervision. 

Critics of CPEs identified several characteristic problems. First, 
because economic processes were so complex, the plan had to be 
a simplification of reality. Individuals and producing units could 
be given directives or targets, but in executing the plan they might 
select courses of action that conflicted with the overall interests of 
society as determined by the planners. Such courses of action might 
include, for example, ignoring quality standards, producing an im- 
proper product mix, or using resources wastefully. 

Second, critics contended that CPEs had built-in obstacles to in- 
novation and efficiency in production. No appropriate mechan- 
ism existed to ensure the prompt, effective transfer of new technical 
advances to actual practice in enterprises. Managers of producing 
units, frequentiy having limited discretionary authority, saw as their 
first priority a strict fulfillment of the plan targets rather than the 
application of the insights gained through research and develop- 
ment or the diversification of products. Plant managers might be 
reluctant to shut down their production lines for modernization 
because the attendant delays could jeopardize the fulfillment of 
targets. 

Third, CPEs were said to lack a system of appropriate incen- 
tives to encourage higher productivity by managers and workers. 
Future mandatory targets were frequently based on past perfor- 
mance. Planners often established targets for the next plan period 
by adding a certain percentage to the achieved output while reduc- 
ing authorized inputs to force greater productivity (sometimes called 
the "ratchet" system by Western analysts). The ratchet system 
discouraged enterprises from revealing their full potential. Managers 
actually might be reluctant to report exceptional levels of output. 

Fourth, the system of allocating goods and services in CPEs was 
inefficient. Most of the total mix of products was distributed ac- 
cording to the plan, with the aid of the system of material balances. 
But because no one could predict perfectly the actual needs of each 
production unit, some units received too many goods and others 
too few. The managers with surpluses, either in materials or in 
human resources, were hesitant to admit they had them, for CPEs 
were typically "taut." Managers preferred to hoard whatever they 
had and then to make informal trades for materials they needed. 
The scarcity of supplies resulting from a taut economy and the un- 
predictability of their availability were persistent problems for enter- 
prises, forcing them to adopt erratic work schedules such as 
"storming." This was a phenomenon whereby many enterprises 
fulfilled a major portion of their monthly plan through frenzied 



464 



Economic Structure and Policy 



activity during the final third of the month, by which time they 
had mustered the necessary supplies. The uncertainty of supply 
was also responsible for a general tendency among industrial minis- 
tries to become self-sufficient by developing their own internal sup- 
ply bases and to give priority to the needs of enterprises under their 
own jurisdiction over the requirements, even though more urgent, 
of enterprises in other ministries (a practice sometimes referred to 
as "departmentalism"). 

Finally, detractors argued that in CPEs prices did not reflect the 
value of available resources, goods, or services. In market econo- 
mies, prices, which are based on cost and utility considerations, 
permit the determination of value, even if imperfectly. In CPEs, 
prices were determined administratively, and the criteria the govern- 
ment used to establish them sometimes bore little relation to costs. 
The influence of consumers was weak (the exception being the 
Ministry of Defense, which was in a position to make explicit de- 
mands of its suppliers). Prices often varied significantly from the 
actual social or economic value of the products for which they had 
been set and were not a valid basis for comparing the relative value 
of two or more products. The system's almost total insulation from 
foreign trade competition exacerbated this problem (see Develop- 
ment of the State Monopoly on Foreign Trade, ch. 15). 

Reforming the Planning System 

Soviet economists and planners have long been aware of the al- 
leged strengths and weaknesses of the centralized planning system. 
Numerous changes in the structure, scope of responsibilities, and 
authority of the various planning and administrative organizations 
have been made over the years. Nevertheless, the fundamental plan- 
ning process remained virtually unchanged after the inception of 
full-scale central planning in 1928 until the late 1980s, when some 
radical changes were discussed. 

In the decades that followed its introduction, the planning process 
became increasingly complex and detailed. Planners specified not 
only quantitative production of goods but also their cost, how they 
would be distributed, and what resources in labor, materials, and 
energy they would require. The complexity of the apparatus ad- 
ministering the plans also increased. Ministries (called people's com- 
missariats until 1946) proliferated, reaching fifty by 1957 and 
reflecting the increasing variety of industrial production. By 1982 
the number of ministries, state committees, and other important 
committees at the all-union level approached 100. Planning had 
become immensely complex; in the 1980s planners had to contend 
with more than 20 million types, varieties, and sizes of products, 



465 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

which were produced by 45,000 industrial, 60,000 agricultural, and 
33,000 construction enterprises. 

Western analysts have viewed reform attempts of Soviet leaders 
prior to the late 1980s as mere tinkering. From 1957 to 1965, how- 
ever, a radical change was made, when Nikita S. Khrushchev spon- 
sored a shift from the predominantly sectoral approach to a regional 
system (see The Khrushchev Era, ch. 2). The reform abolished 
most industrial ministries and transferred planning and adminis- 
trative authority to about 100 newly created regional economic 
councils. The regime hoped to end unsatisfactory coordination 
among the industrial ministries and ineffective regional planning. 
Khrushchev apparently hoped to end the traditional concentration 
of administrative power in Moscow, reduce departmentalism, and 
make more efficient use of specific economic resources of the vari- 
ous regions. Other changes under Khrushchev included extension 
of the usual five-year cycle to seven years, from 1959 to 1965, which 
was subsequently reduced to five years. When the regional system 
proved to be even less effective than the organizational structure 
it had replaced, and the weaknesses of the ministerial system reap- 
peared in a regional context, Khrushchev sponsored an additional 
series of minor changes. But in 1965, after Leonid I. Brezhnev and 
Aleksei N. Kosygin had replaced Khrushchev as head of party and 
head of government, respectively, the regime abolished the regional 
economic councils and reinstituted the industrial ministerial sys- 
tem, although with greater participation of regional bodies in the 
planning process, at least in theory. 

Several reforms of the mid- and late 1960s represented efforts 
to decentralize decision-making processes, transferring some 
authority from central planning authorities and ministries to lower- 
level entities and enterprises. A series of minor reforms in 1965 
modified the incentive system by shifting emphasis from gross out- 
put to sales and profits, a reform associated with the name of the 
eminent economist Evsei Liberman. The reforms attempted to pro- 
vide a more precise measure of labor and materials productivity. 
They also granted enterprise managers slightly greater latitude in 
making operating decisions by reducing the number of plan indi- 
cators assigned by higher authorities. In addition, the reforms in- 
troduced charges for interest and rent. Attention focused particularly 
on experiments with khozraschet (see Glossary), which, in the late 
1980s, required enterprises to cover many expenses from their own 
revenues, thereby encouraging efficient use of resources. In the 
agricultural sector, state farms and collective farms received greater 
latitude in organizing their work activities and in establishing sub- 
sidiary industrial enterprises such as canning and food processing, 



466 



Economic Structure and Policy 



timber and textile production, production of building materials, 
and actual construction projects. 

In practice, the amount of decentralization involved in the re- 
forms of the mid-1960s was minimal. For a variety of reasons, in- 
cluding uneasiness about the unrest associated with reforms in 
Czechoslovakia in 1967 and 1968, planning officials judged the re- 
forms to be failures. By the early 1970s, efforts at further reforms 
had ceased, although the government never repealed the new regu- 
lations. As the only noteworthy, lasting change, the government 
began to use measures of net output rather than gross output as 
a success indicator for enterprises. 

During the last years of Brezhnev's rule, the leadership remained 
relatively complacent about the system despite the economy's slow- 
ing growth rates. Increases in world oil and gold prices contrib- 
uted to this attitude because they enhanced hard-currency (see 
Glossary) purchasing power in the early 1970s and made it possi- 
ble to import increasing amounts of Western technology. 

In response to the stagnation of the late Brezhnev era, a new 
reform attempt began under Iurii V. Andropov, who succeeded 
Brezhnev as general secretary in 1982. On an experimental basis, 
the government gave a number of enterprises greater flexibility in 
the use of their profits either for investment purposes or for worker 
incentives. The experiment was formally expanded to include all 
of the industrial sector on January 1, 1987, although by that time 
its limited nature and modest prospects for success had been widely 
recognized. 

In the meantime, however, Gorbachev, a leading proponent of 
both these reforms and more extensive changes, was making his 
influence felt, first as adviser on economic policy under Andropov 
and his successor, Konstantin U. Chernenko, and then as general 
secretary beginning in 1985. Some of Gorbachev's early initiatives 
involved mere reorganization, similar to previous reform efforts. 
For example, from 1985 to 1987 seven industrial complexes — organs 
that were responsible directly to the Council of Ministers and that 
monitored groups of related activities — were established: agro- 
industrial, chemicals and timber, construction, fuel and energy, 
machine building, light industry, and metallurgy (see The Com- 
plexes and the Ministries, ch. 12). The ministries remained reluc- 
tant to undertake more extensive reforms that would reduce their 
centralized power and give greater initiative to lower-level economic 
units. But the conviction was growing that the centralized plan- 
ning mechanism needed major changes and that simply fine-tuning 
the economy with minor reforms would not be sufficient. 



467 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

At Gorbachev's urging, on June 30, 1987, the Supreme Soviet 
approved a set of measures contained in the Basic Provisions for Fun- 
damentally Reorganizing Economic Management. The Supreme Soviet 
subsequentiy adopted an additional ten decrees, as well as the Law 
on State Enterprises (Associations). Taken as a whole, the actions 
of the Supreme Soviet signaled a substantial change in the system 
of centralized planning, with significant amounts of authority 
devolving upon middle and lower levels of the administrative hier- 
archy. Gorbachev named the economic restructuring program 
perestroika (see Glossary). 

The Basic Provisions clearly stated that the economy would con- 
tinue to function as ' £ a unified national economic complex, ' ' carry- 
ing out the policies of the party. The regime obviously intended 
to retain great influence in the management and development of 
enterprises. The new measures also called for a redefinition and 
curtailment of the role of Gosplan. Beginning in 1991, Gosplan 
would no longer draw up annual plans. It would continue to de- 
velop five- and fifteen-year plans, specify state orders (involving 
about 25 percent of total output), and determine material balances 
for products considered to be critically important to the economy 
and national defense. Gosplan' s development of "non-binding con- 
trol figures" would suggest overall output, profit targets, and var- 
ious indicators of technical and social progress. Long-term norms 
would regulate ongoing development, such as total wage payments 
and payments to various state-sponsored funds, for example, bonus 
funds, resources for social services, and research and development 
resources. Once enterprises had filled the designated state orders, 
however, they would have considerable freedom in deciding what 
to produce with the remainder of their resources and how to dispose 
of the products. 

The new Law on State Enterprises (Associations) called for khoz- 
raschet. By the end of 1989, all enterprises in the economy were 
to make the transition to self-financing {samofinansirovanie — see Glos- 
sary), taking full responsibility for the financial outcome of their 
actions. The state budget would pay only for major investment 
projects. A principal criterion forjudging enterprise and manage- 
ment performance would be the fulfillment of contracts. Enterprises 
would be free to reduce the size of their work force or to dismiss 
workers for poor performance. The law also provided for the 
bankruptcy and dissolution of enterprises that consistentiy operated 
at a loss. Their workers would receive severance pay and assistance 
in job placement from the state. In addition, the law called for the 
election of management personnel in enterprises, subject to approval 
by the next-higher authority. Finally, the law called for the election 



468 



Economic Structure and Policy 



of labor councils to resolve matters of pay, discipline, training, and 
use of incentive funds. Only one-fourth of the membership could 
represent the interests of management, and the councils' decisions 
would be binding on the entire work force of the enterprise. 

The reforms attempted to decentralize distribution. The law 
enabled enterprises to deal with the suppliers of their choice, either 
producers or wholesale outlets. Rationing would continue for only 
the scarcest producer goods, less than 4 percent of total industrial 
output in 1988. For the remainder, producers would be free to sell 
directly to users. Finally, the law permitted some enterprises to 
engage in foreign trade directly, on their own account, and to re- 
tain some of the foreign currency gains. 

Tools of Control 

By the 1980s, the planning system had become extremely com- 
plex. Maintaining control over plan implementation was a difficult 
task. The same administrative structure undertook both the plan- 
ning itself and the oversight of plan fulfillment. The banking sys- 
tem, party units within lower-level organizations and enterprises, 
and any workers willing to take responsibility for bringing to light 
failings within their organizations provided assistance. Labor union 
activists also helped supervise performance at the enterprise level 
and solicited support for plan fulfillment. 

In addition to exercising this direct control, planners and policy 
makers used the budget to influence the economy. The bulk of the 
revenues for the budget came from levies on the profits of enter- 
prises and from an indirect tax on consumer goods. These tax levies 
could be readily altered to support changing plan priorities, par- 
ticularly because the government produced no long-term budgets, 
only yearly ones. The regime distributed budget funds according 
to priorities that reflected the goals of the economic plans. Unlike 
state budgets in the West, the Soviet budget had a consolidated 
format for all levels of the government. Traditionally, the budget 
also had included most of the investment activity carried on within 
the economy. Reforms of the 1980s promised to alter the situation 
somewhat, however; the Law on State Enterprises (Associations) 
called upon enterprises to use their own profits as major sources 
of investment (see Reforming the Planning System, this ch.). 

According to official Soviet sources, primary expenditures in the 
1985 budget were grants for economic purposes (56 percent of the 
budget); funds for social and cultural services (32.5 percent); defense 
spending (4.9 percent); and administrative costs (0.8 percent). A 
small surplus remained (typical of Soviet budgets, according to pub- 
lished data). Western analysts considered these statistics unreliable; 



469 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

most Western observers believed the defense budget's share was 
far greater than official figures suggested. Furthermore, Soviet defi- 
nitions of various economic measurements differed markedly from 
Western concepts (for example, the use of net material product to 
measure output). 

The government's pricing policy acted as another control 
mechanism. These prices provided a basis for calculating expenses 
and receipts, making possible assessment of outputs. The regime 
also used manipulation of prices to achieve certain social goals, such 
as encouragement of public transportation or dissemination of cul- 
tural values through low-priced books, journals, and recreational 
and cultural events. 

Over the years, this centralized system had produced prices with 
little relationship either to the real costs of the products or to their 
price on the world market. For several decades, the government 
kept the price of basic goods, such as essential foods, housing, and 
transportation, artificially low, regardless of actual production costs. 
As agricultural costs had increased, for example, subsidies to the 
agricultural sector had grown, but retail prices remained stable. 
Only prices for luxury goods had risen, particularly during the price 
overhauls of 1965 and 1982. 

The Basic Provisions passed by the Supreme Soviet called for 
thorough reform of the price structure by 1990, in time for use 
in the Thirteenth Five- Year Plan (1991-95). This price reform was 
more extensive than previous reforms, affecting both wholesale and 
retail prices. In the future, central authorities would establish far 
fewer prices, although all prices would still be closely monitored. 
Plans for reform provoked public controversy because the changes 
would end subsidies for many common items, such as meat, milk, 
fuel, and housing. Authorities promised a thorough public discus- 
sion of retail price changes and gave assurances that the living stan- 
dards of workers would not decline. 

Like prices, wages were a flexible tool by means of which the 
government influenced the economic scene. Until 1931 the regime 
attempted to enforce an egalitarian wage structure. Policy con- 
cerning wage differentials had fluctuated in later years, however. 
In some periods, ideology and egalitarianism were emphasized, 
whereas at other times the government used rewards and incen- 
tives. Beginning in 1956, when it established a minimum wage, 
the government made a concerted effort to improve the wages of 
those in the lower-paid categories of work and to lessen differences 
among workers. With the reforms of the 1980s, however, wage 
differentials were again increasing, with high-quality technical, 
executive, and professional skills being favored in the wage structure. 



470 



Modern apartment building, Frunze, Kirgiz Republic 

Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 

Precise information concerning wages, including the level of the 
minimum wage, was not publicly available in the late 1980s. 
Western analysts did not agree on the size of wage differentials, 
although these differences were generally considered to be smaller 
than was the case in the West. According to Western estimates, 
however, important party and government personages received as 
much as five times the average salary. Outstanding scientists and 
selected intellectuals also prospered. 

The average worker received fringe benefits totaling about 30 
percent above and beyond his or her salary. These benefits in- 
cluded free education and health care, paid vacations, and other 
government-subsidized services. In addition to wages, the regime 
used other incentives, such as cash bonuses paid to both individ- 
uals and groups of workers and "socialist competitions," to spur 
the work force on to greater efforts. 

Economic Policy 

Socialist theory provides no practical guidelines or objective cri- 
teria for determining priorities for the various economic sectors and 
ensuring balanced growth of the entire economy. The direction 
of economic development depends upon decisions made by plan- 
ners on the basis of their evaluation of the country's needs, taking 



471 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

into account political, military, and other noneconomic consider- 
ations. 

Past Priorities 

The Bolsheviks (see Glossary), who assumed power in late 1917, 
sought to mold a socialist society from the ruins of old tsarist Rus- 
sia. This goal was ambitious and somewhat vague; Karl Marx and 
Friedrich Engels, who developed Marxism (see Glossary), provided 
no blueprints for specific economic policies and targets. Chaotic 
conditions produced by World War I and subsequent struggles dur- 
ing the Civil War (1918-21) made pursuit of coherent policies 
difficult in any case. The economic policies initially adopted by 
the regime were a mixture of principle and expedience. 

Soon after taking power, the regime published decrees nation- 
alizing the land, most industry (all enterprises employing more than 
five workers), foreign trade, and banking. At the same time, for 
tactical reasons, the government acquiesced in the peasants' sei- 
zure of land, but the new leaders considered the resulting frag- 
mented parcels of privately owned land to be inefficient. 

Beginning in 1918, the government made vigorous but some- 
what haphazard efforts to shape and control the country's econ- 
omy under a policy of war communism (see Glossary). But in 1920, 
agricultural output had attained only half its prewar level, foreign 
trade had virtually ceased, and industrial production had fallen to 
a small fraction of its prewar quantity. Such factors as the disas- 
trous harvest of 1920, major military actions and expenditures by 
the Red Army, and general wartime destruction and upheaval ex- 
acerbated the economy's problems. 

In 1921 Vladimir I. Lenin called a temporary retreat from ap- 
plication of the ideological requirements of Marxist doctrine. His 
new approach, called the New Economic Policy (NEP), permitted 
some private enterprise, especially in agriculture, light industry, 
services, and internal trade, to restore prewar economic strength. 
The nationalization of heavy industry, transportation, foreign trade, 
and banking that had occurred under war communism remained 
in effect. 

In the late 1920s, Stalin abandoned NEP in favor of centralized 
planning, which was modeled on a project sponsored by Lenin in 
the early 1920s that had greatly increased the generation of elec- 
tricity. Stalin sought to rapidly transform the Soviet Union from 
a predominandy agricultural country into a modern industrial pow- 
er. He and other leaders argued that by becoming a strong cen- 
trally planned industrial power, the country could protect itself 
militarily from hostile outside intervention and economically from 



472 



Economic Structure and Policy 

the booms and slumps characteristic of capitalism (see Industriali- 
zation and Collectivization, ch. 2). 

The First Five- Year Plan (1928-32) focused rather narrowly upon 
expansion of heavy industry and collectivization of agriculture. Sta- 
lin's decision to carry out rapid industrialization made capital- 
intensive techniques necessary. International loans to build the econ- 
omy were unavailable, both because the new government had 
repudiated the international debts of the tsarist regime and because 
industrialized countries, the potential lenders, were themselves cop- 
ing with the onset of the Great Depression in the early 1930s. Sta- 
lin chose to fund the industrialization effort through internal savings 
and investment. He singled out the agricultural sector in particu- 
lar as a source of capital accumulation. 

The First Five-Year Plan called for collectivization of agricul- 
ture to ensure the adequacy and dependability of food supplies for 
the growing industrial sector and the efficient use of agricultural 
labor to free labor power for the industrialization effort. The re- 
gime also expected collectivization to lead to an overall increase 
in agricultural production. In fact, forced collectivization resulted 
in much hardship for the rural population and lower productivity. 
By 1932 about 60 percent of peasant households had joined state 
farms or collective farms. During the same period, however, total 
agricultural output declined by 23 percent, according to official 
statistics. Heavy industry exceeded its targets in many areas dur- 
ing the plan period. But other industries, such as chemicals, tex- 
tiles, and housing and consumer goods and services, performed 
poorly. Consumption per person dropped, contrary to the planned 
rates of consumption. 

The Second Five-Year Plan (1933-37) continued the primary 
emphasis on heavy industry. By the late 1930s, however, collec- 
tivized farms were performing somewhat better (after reaching a 
nadir during the period 1931-34). In 1935 a new law permitted 
individual peasants to have private plots, the produce of which they 
could sell on the open market. According to official statistics, dur- 
ing the Second Five-Year Plan gross agricultural production in- 
creased by just under 54 percent. In contrast, gross industrial 
production more than doubled. 

The Third Five-Year Plan (1938-41) projected further rapid in- 
dustrial growth. The government soon altered the plan, however, 
in an attempt to meet the growing danger of war, devoting in- 
creasing amounts of resources to armaments. When the country 
went to war with Finland (1939-40), serious disruptions occurred 
in the Soviet transportation system. Nonetheless, during these years 
the economy benefited from the absorption of Estonia, Latvia, 



473 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Lithuania, Bessarabia, and the eastern part of Poland and from 
the growing trade with Germany that resulted from the 1939 Nazi- 
Soviet Nonaggression Pact (see Glossary; Prelude to War, ch. 2). 

After the German invasion of 1941, damage to the economy in 
both human and material terms was devastating. The regime vir- 
tually abandoned the Third Five-Year Plan as it sought to mobi- 
lize human and material resources for the war effort. During World 
War II, an increasing proportion of products and materials were 
allocated centrally, and Gosplan took over more of the balancing 
and allocation plans. Wartime economic plans did not officially 
replace the traditional planning process but were simply super- 
imposed as needed to cover activities and goods essential to the 
war effort (see The Great Patriotic War, ch. 2). 

The Fourth Five-Year Plan began in 1945. During the early years 
of the period, attention focused on repair and rebuilding, with 
minimal construction of new facilities. Repair work proceeded 
briskly, with spectacular results. The country received no substantial 
aid for postwar reconstruction, Stalin having refused to consider 
proposals for participation in the Marshall Plan (see Glossary) in 
1947. Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, and especially defeated Ger- 
many made reparations payments to the Soviet Union, however, 
consisting in large part of equipment and industrial materials. Entire 
German factories and their workers were brought to the Soviet 
Union to train Soviet citizens in specialized work processes. 
Although the government never published definitive statistics, an 
authoritative Western assessment estimated the value of repara- 
tions at an average of 5 billion rubles per year between 1945 and 
1956. The exertions of the country's inhabitants, however, cou- 
pled with ambitious economic strategies, proved most crucial for 
the recovery. 

During the war years, the government had transferred substan- 
tial numbers of industrial enterprises from threatened western areas 
to Asian regions of the country. After the war, these facilities re- 
mained at their new sites as part of an effort to promote economic 
development. These locations had the advantage of being near raw 
materials and energy sources. The government also deemed it 
strategically sound to have the important installations of the coun- 
try distributed among several regions. 

Like earlier plans, the Fourth Five-Year Plan stressed heavy in- 
dustry and transportation. The economy met most of the targets 
in heavy industry. The performance of agriculture again lagged 
behind industry. Western observers believed that factors in agricul- 
ture's poor performance included a paucity of investment, enforce- 
ment of a strict quota system for delivery of agricultural products 



474 



Economic Structure and Policy 



to the state, and tenuous linkage between wages and production, 
which deprived farmers of incentives. Housing construction, com- 
munity services, and other consumer items also lagged noticeably. 
During the final years of the plan, Stalin launched several gran- 
diose projects, including building canals and hydroelectric plants 
and establishing tree plantations in the Armenian, Azerbaydzhan, 
Georgian, and Ukrainian republics and in the Volga River area 
of the Russian Republic to shield land from drying winds. Collec- 
tively, these efforts were referred to as ' 'the Stalin plan for the trans- 
formation of nature." 

Throughout the Stalin era, the^pace of industrial growth was 
forced. On those occasions when shortages developed in heavy in- 
dustry and endangered plan fulfillment, the government simply 
shifted resources from agriculture, light industry, and other sec- 
tors. The situation of the consumer improved little during the Stalin 
years as a whole. Major declines in real household consumption 
occurred during the early 1930s and in the war years. Although 
living standards had rebounded after reaching a low point at the 
end of World War II, by 1950 real household consumption had 
climbed to a level only one-tenth higher than that of 1928. Judged 
by modern West European standards, the clothing, housing, so- 
cial services, and diet of the people left much to be desired. 

Although Stalin died in 1953, the Fifth Five-Year Plan (1951-55) 
as a whole reflected his preoccupation with heavy industry and trans- 
portation, the more so because no single leader firmly controlled 
policy after Stalin's death (see Collective Leadership and the Rise 
of Khrushchev, ch. 2). In many respects, economic performance 
pleased the leadership during the period. According to government 
statistics (considered by Western observers to be somewhat inflated), 
the economy met most growth targets, despite the allocation of 
resources to rearmament during the Korean War (1950-53). Na- 
tional income increased 71 percent during the plan period. As in 
previous plans, heavy industry received a major share of investment 
funds. During the final years of the Fifth Five-Year Plan, however, 
party leaders began to express concern about the dearth of consumer 
goods, housing, and services, as they reassessed traditional priori- 
ties. The new prime minister, Georgii M. Malenkov, sponsored a 
revision of the Fifth Five-Year Plan, reducing expenditures for heavy 
industry and the military somewhat in order to satisfy consumer 
demand. The newly appointed first secretary (see Glossary) of the 
party, Khrushchev, launched a program to bring under cultivation 
extensive tracts of virgin land in southwestern Siberia and the Kazakh 
Republic to bolster fodder and livestock production. Although 
Malenkov lost his position as prime minister in 1955, largely as a 



475 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

result of opposition to his economic policies, the austere approach 
of the Stalin era was never revived. 

An ambitious Sixth Five- Year Plan was launched in 1956. After 
initial revision, prompted at least in part by political considera- 
tions, the regime abandoned the plan in 1957 to make way for a 
seven-year plan (subsequently reduced to a five-year plan) that fo- 
cused particularly on coal and oil production and the chemical in- 
dustry. Khrushchev, who became principal leader after 1956, took 
particular interest in these areas of production. The seven-year plan 
provided substantial investment funds — over 40 percent of the 
total — for the eastern areas of the country. Khrushchev also spon- 
sored reforms to encourage production on the private plots of col- 
lective farmers. 

During the seven-year plan, industrial progress was substantial, 
and production of consumer durables also grew. The national in- 
come increased 58 percent, according to official statistics. Gross 
industrial production rose by 84 percent, with producer goods up 
96 percent and consumer goods up 60 percent. Growth rates slowed 
noticeably during the final years of the plan, however. Party lead- 
ers blamed Khrushchev's bungling efforts to reform the central- 
ized planning system and his tendency to overemphasize programs 
in one economic sector (such as his favorite, the chemical indus- 
try) at the expense of other sectors (see Reforming the Planning 
System, this ch.). Agriculture's performance proved disappoint- 
ing in the 1960s; adverse weather in 1963 and 1965, as well as 
Khrushchev's interference and policy reversals, which confused and 
discouraged the peasants' work on their private plots, were con- 
tributing factors. Khrushchev's economic policies were a signifi- 
cant, although not sole, reason for his dismissal in October 1964. 

The Eighth Five- Year Plan (1966-70), under the leadership of 
Khrushchev's successor as party head, Brezhnev, chalked up respec- 
table growth statistics: national income increased 41 percent and 
industrial production 50 percent, according to government statis- 
tics. Growth in producer goods (51 percent) outpaced that in con- 
sumer goods (49 percent) only slighdy, reflecting planners' growing 
concern about the plight of consumers. During the late 1960s, 
Brezhnev raised procurement prices for agricultural products, while 
holding constant retail prices for consumers. Agriculture thus be- 
came a net burden on the rest of the economy. Although produc- 
tion increased, the sector's performance remained unsatisfactory. 
The country had to import increasing amounts of grain from the 
West. 

In the Ninth Five- Year Plan (1971-75), a slowdown in virtually 
all sectors became apparent (see The Economy, ch. 2). National 



476 



Economic Structure and Policy 



income grew only 28 percent during the period, and gross indus- 
trial production increased by 43 percent. The 37 percent growth 
rate for the production of consumer goods was well below the 
planned target of 45.6 percent. Problems in agriculture grew more 
acute during the period. The gap between supply and demand in- 
creased, especially for fodder. 

Results for the Tenth Five- Year Plan (1976-80) were even more 
disappointing. National income increased only 20 percent and gross 
industrial production only 24 percent. The production of consumer 
goods grew a meager 21 percent. Western observers rated the 
growth of the country's gross national product (GNP — see Glos- 
sary) at less than 2 percent in the late 1970s. 

For Soviet leaders, the modest growth rates were a perplexing 
problem. The ability to maintain impressive growth rates while 
providing full employment and economic security for citizens and 
an equitable distribution of wealth had always been one area in 
which supporters of the Soviet system had argued that it was su- 
perior. Soviet leaders could point to many achievements; by vir- 
tually any standard, the gap between the Soviet economy and the 
economies of other major industrialized powers had narrowed dur- 
ing the years of Soviet rule. Throughout the early decades of the 
economy's development, plans had emphasized large, quick addi- 
tions of labor, capital, and materials to achieve rapid, "extensive" 
growth. 

By the 1970s, however, prospects for extensive growth were lim- 
ited. During the 1960s, the Soviet Union had shown the fastest 
growth in employment of all major industrial countries, and the 
Soviet Union together with Japan had boasted the most rapid 
growth of fixed capital stock. Yet Soviet growth rates in produc- 
tivity of both labor and capital had been the lowest. In the 1970s, 
the labor force grew more slowly. Drawing on surplus rural labor 
was no longer possible, and the participation of women in the work 
force was already extensive. Furthermore, the natural resources 
required for extensive growth lay in areas increasingly difficult, 
and expensive, to reach. In the less-developed eastern regions of 
the country, development costs exceeded those in the European 
parts by 30 percent to 100 percent. In the more developed areas 
of the country, the slow rate at which fixed assets were retired was 
becoming a major problem; fixed assets remained in service on 
average twice as long as in Western economies, reducing overall 
productivity. Nevertheless, in the late 1970s some Western analysts 
estimated that the Soviet Union had the world's second largest econ- 
omy, and its GNP continued to grow in the 1980s (see table 31, 
Appendix A). 



477 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Serious imbalances characterized the economy, however, and 
the Soviet Union lagged behind most Western industrialized na- 
tions in the production of consumer goods and services. A stated 
goal of Soviet policy had always been to raise the material living 
standards of the people. Considerable progress had been made; 
according to Western estimates (less flattering than Soviet), from 
1950 and 1980 real per capita consumption increased 300 percent. 
The country's leaders had devoted the bulk of the available resources 
to heavy industry, however, particularly to * 'production of the 
means of production. " Levels of consumption remained below those 
of major capitalist countries and most of the socialist countries of 
Eastern Europe. By the late 1970s, policy makers had recognized 
the need to improve productivity by emphasizing quality factors, 
efficiency, and advanced technology and tapping ' 'hidden produc- 
tion reserves" in the economy. 

Concern about productivity characterized the Eleventh Five-Year 
Plan (1981-85). The targets were rather modest, and planners 
reduced even those after the first year of the period. Achievements 
remained below target. The plan period as a whole produced a 
modest growth rate of 3 to 4 percent per year, according to official 
statistics. National income increased only 17 percent. Total indus- 
trial output grew by 20 percent, with the production of consumer 
goods increasing at a marginally higher rate than producer goods. 
Agricultural output registered a meager 11.6 percent gain. 

The Twelfth Five-Year Plan, 1986-90 

When Gorbachev attained power in 1985, most Western analysts 
were convinced that Soviet economic performance would not im- 
prove significantly during the remainder of the 1980s. "Intensifi- 
cation" alone seemed unlikely to yield important immediate results. 
Gorbachev tackled the country's economic problems energetically, 
however, declaring that the economy had entered a "pre-crisis" 
stage. The leadership and the press acknowledged shortcomings 
in the economy with a new frankness. 

Restating the aims of earlier intensification efforts, the Basic Direc- 
tions for the Economic and Social Development of the USSR for 1986-1990 
and for the Period to the Year 2000 declared the principal tasks of the 
five-year plan period to be "to enhance the pace and efficiency of 
economic development by accelerating scientific and technical 
progress, retooling and adapting production, intensively using exist- 
ing production potential, and improving the managerial system and 
accounting mechanism, and, on this basis, to further raise the stan- 
dard of living of the Soviet people." A major part of the planned 
increase in output for the 1986-90 period was to result from the 



478 



Privately owned cafe, Moscow 
Courtesy Irene Steckler 



introduction of new machinery to replace unskilled labor. New, 
advanced technologies, such as microprocessors, robots, and vari- 
ous computers, would automate and mechanize production. Obso- 
lete equipment was to be retired at an accelerated rate. Industrial 
operations requiring high energy inputs would be located close to 
energy sources, and increasing numbers of workplaces would be 
in regions with the requisite manpower resources. Economic de- 
velopment of Siberia and the Soviet Far East would continue to 
receive special attention. 

Gorbachev tackled the problem of laxness in the workplace and 
low worker productivity (or, as he phrased it, the "human factor") 
with great vigor. This attention to individual productivity and dis- 
cipline resulted in the demotion or dismissal of influential older 
officials who had proved to be corrupt or ineffective. Gorbachev 
called for improved motivation among rank-and-file workers and 
launched a vigorous antialcohol campaign (also a priority under 
Andropov). 

At the Central Committee plenum in January 1987, Gorbachev 
demanded a fundamental reassessment of the role of the govern- 
ment in Soviet society. His economic reform program was sweep- 
ing, encompassing an array of changes. For example, it created 
a new finance system through which factories would obtain loans 



479 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

at interest, and it provided for the competitive election of managers 
(see Reforming the Planning System, this ch.). These changes 
proceeded from Gorbachev's conviction that a major weakness in 
the economy was the extreme centralization of economic decision 
making, inappropriate under modern conditions. According to Abel 
Aganbegian, an eminent Soviet economist and the principal schol- 
arly spokesman for many of Gorbachev's policies, the Soviet Union 
was facing a critical decision: " Either we implement radical re- 
form in management and free driving forces, or we follow an evolu- 
tionary line of slow evolution and gradual improvement. If we follow 
the second direction, . . . we will not achieve our goals." The coun- 
try was entering "a truly new period of restructuring, a period of 
cardinal breakthroughs," he said, at the same time stressing the 
leadership's continuing commitment to socialism. 

In one of his most controversial policy decisions, Gorbachev 
moved to encourage private economic activities and cooperative 
ventures. The action had clear limits, however. It established a 
progressive tax on profits, and regulations limited participation 
mainly to students, retired persons, and housewives. Full-time 
workers could devote only their leisure hours to private activities. 
Cooperatives that involved at least three people could engage in 
a broad range of consumer-oriented activities: using private au- 
tomobiles as taxis, opening private restaurants, offering private 
medical care, repairing automobiles or appliances, binding books, 
and tailoring. In addition, the reform encouraged state enterprises 
to contract with private individuals for certain services. Other regu- 
lations gave official approval to the activities of profit-oriented con- 
tract brigades. These brigades consisted of groups of workers in 
an enterprise or collective farm who joined together to make an 
internal contract with management for performance of specific tasks, 
receiving compensation in a lump sum that the brigade itself dis- 
tributed as it saw fit. Additional decrees specified types of activi- 
ties that remained illegal (those involving "unearned income") and 
established strict penalties for violators. The new regulations le- 
gitimized major portions of the second economy and permitted their 
expansion. No doubt authorities hoped that the consuming public 
would reap immediate, tangible benefits from the changes. Authori- 
ties also expected these policies to encourage individuals who were 
still operating illegally to abide by the new, more lenient regulations. 

In keeping with Gorbachev's ambitious reform policies, the 
specific targets of the Twelfth Five- Year Plan (1986-90) were 
challenging. The targets posited an average growth rate in national 
income of about 4 percent yearly. To reach this goal, increases in 



480 



Economic Structure and Policy 



labor productivity were to average 4 percent annually, a rate that 
had not been sustained on a regular basis since the early 1970s. 
The ratio of expenditure on material inputs and energy to national 
income was to decrease by 4 to 5 percent in the plan period. Simi- 
lar savings were projected for other aspects of the economy. 

The plan stressed technical progress. Machine-building output 
was to increase by 40 to 45 percent during the five-year period. 
Those sectors involved in high technology were to grow faster than 
industry as a whole. The production of computers, for example, 
was to increase 2.4 times during the plan period. Growth in produc- 
tion of primary energy would accelerate during the period, aver- 
aging 3.6 percent per year, compared with 2.6 percent actual growth 
per year for 1981-85. The plan called for major growth in nuclear 
power capacity. (The Chernobyl' accident of 1986 did not alter 
these plans.) 

Capital investment was to grow by 23.6 percent, whereas under 
the Eleventh Five- Year Plan the growth rate had been only 15.4 
percent. Roughly half of the funds would be used for the retooling 
necessary for intensification. The previous plan had earmarked 38 
percent for this purpose. Agriculture would receive large invest- 
ments as well. 

The plan called for a relatively modest improvement in the stan- 
dard of living. The share of total investment in services was to rise 
only slightly, although the proportion of the labor force employed 
in services would continue to grow. 

The regime also oudined very ambitious guidelines for the fifteen- 
year period beginning in 1986. The guidelines called for a 5 per- 
cent yearly growth in national income; national income was 
projected to double by the year 2000. Labor productivity would 
grow by 6.5 to 7.4 percent per year during the 1990s. Projected 
modernization of the workplace would release 20 million people 
from unskilled work by the year 2000. Plans called for increasingly 
efficient use of fuels, energy, raw materials, metal, and other materi- 
als. The guidelines singled out the provision of "practically every 
Soviet family" with separate housing by the beginning of the 
twenty-first century as a special, high-priority task. 

Results of the first year of the Twelfth Five- Year Plan, 1986, 
were encouraging in many respects. The industrial growth rate was 
below target but still respectable at just above 3 percent. Agricul- 
ture made a good showing. During 1987, however, GNP grew by 
less than 1 percent, according to Western calculations, and indus- 
trial production grew a mere 1.5 percent. Some problems were 
the result of harsh weather and traditional supply bottlenecks. In 



481 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

addition, improvements in quality called for by Gorbachev proved 
difficult to realize; in 1987, when the government introduced a new 
inspection system for output at a number of industrial enterprises, 
rejection rates were high, especially for machinery. 

Many of Gorbachev's reforms that immediately affected the or- 
dinary working person — such as demands for harder work, more 
rigid quality controls, better discipline, and restraints on tradition- 
ally high alcohol consumption — were unlikely to please the pub- 
lic, particularly since the rewards and payoffs of most changes were 
likely to be several years away. As the Nineteenth Party Confer- 
ence of 1988 demonstrated, party leaders continued to debate the 
pace and the degree of change. Uncertainty about the extent and 
permanence of reform was bound to create some disarray within 
the economy, at least for the short term. Western analysts did not 
expect Gorbachev's entire program to succeed, particularly given 
the lackluster performance of the economy during the second year 
of the Twelfth Five- Year Plan. The meager results of past reform 
attempts offered few grounds for optimism. But most observers be- 
lieved that at least a portion of the reforms would be effective. The 
result was almost certain to benefit the economy. 

* * * 

The economic reforms of the mid-1980s have attracted the at- 
tention of many Western observers. As a result, English-language 
sources of information about the new measures are plentiful. An 
especially useful compendium of reports about the changes is Gor- 
bachev's Economic Plans, produced by the United States Congress. 
An earlier collection of reports submitted to the United States Con- 
gress, entided The Soviet Economy in the 1980s, remains useful. Valu- 
able analyses of the ' 'traditional," pre-reform Soviet economy, still 
essential for an understanding of the nature and extent of the re- 
forms of the mid- and late 1980s, may be found in The Soviet Econ- 
omy, edited by Abram Bergson and Herbert S. Levine, and in 
Modern Soviet Economic Performance by Trevor Buck and John Cole. 
For ongoing observation and commentary on the changing eco- 
nomic scene, the interested reader may consult current issues of 
the periodicals Soviet Studies and Soviet Economy as well as relevant 
issues of the Joint Publications Research Service. For earlier de- 
velopment of the Soviet economy, standard works such as Maurice 
Dobb's Soviet Economic Development since 1917 and Alec Nove's An 
Economic History of the U.S.S.R. remain indispensable. (For further 
information and complete citations, see Bibliography.) 



482 



Chapter 12. Industry 




Aspects of industry 



SINCE THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION of 1917, industry 
has been officially the most important economic activity in the Soviet 
Union and a critical indicator of its standing among the nations 
of the world. Compared with Western countries, a very high per- 
centage of the Soviet population works in the production of material 
goods. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) con- 
siders constant growth in heavy industry vital for national secu- 
rity, and its policy has achieved several periods of spectacular 
growth. However, industrial growth has been uneven, with nota- 
ble failures in light and consumer industries, and impressive statis- 
tics have often concealed failures in individual branches. And, in 
the late 1980s, reliable statistics continued to be unavailable in some 
areas and unreliable in others. 

The Soviet Union is blessed with more essential industrial 
resources than any other nation. Using the most accessible of those 
materials, industries such as textiles and metallurgy have thrived 
since the 1600s. Large industrial centers developed almost exclu- 
sively in the European part of the country. Examples of such centers 
are the Donbass (see Glossary), the Moscow industrial area, and 
the Kursk and Magnitogorsk metallurgical centers, all of which 
are still in full operation. But intense industrial activity eventually 
exhausted the most accessible resource materials. In the late twen- 
tieth century, reserves have been tapped in the adjacent regions, 
especially the oil and gas fields of western Siberia. Most of the re- 
maining reserves are outside the European sector of the country, 
presenting planners with the formidable task of bridging thousands 
of kilometers to unite raw materials, labor, energy, and centers 
of consumption. The urgency of industrial location decisions has 
grown as production quotas have risen in every new planning 
period. Moreover, the nature and location of the Soviet labor force 
presents another serious problem for planners. 

Joseph V. Stalin's highly centralized industrial management sys- 
tem survived into the late 1980s. Numerous councils, bureaus, and 
committees in Moscow traditionally approved details of industrial 
policies. The slow reaction time of such a system was adequate for 
the gradual modernization of the 1950s, but the system fell behind 
the faster pace of high-technology advancement that began in the 
1960s. Soviet policy has consistently called for "modernization" 
of industry and use of the most advanced automated equipment — 
especially because of the military significance of high technology. 



485 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Although policy programs identified automation as critical to all 
Soviet industry, the civilian sector generally has lagged in the 
modernization campaign. The priority given to the military- 
industrial sector, however, not only prevented the growth that plan- 
ners envisioned but also caused the serious slowdown that began 
around 1970. In a massive effort to restructure the system under 
perestroika (see Glossary), planners have sought ways to speed deci- 
sion making to meet immediate industrial needs by finding short- 
cuts through the ponderous industrial bureaucracy. 

Another strain on the industrial system has been the commit- 
ment to improving production of consumer goods. Nikita S. 
Khrushchev, first secretary (see Glossary) of the CPSU in the late 
1950s and early 1960s, initially tried to temper the Stalinist pri- 
ority of heavy industry. Khrushchev's idea was followed with vary- 
ing degrees of enthusiasm; it became more binding as consumers 
learned about Western standards of living and as officials began 
stating the goal more forcefully in the 1980s. 

Development of Soviet Industry 

Russian industrial activity began before 1700, although it was 
limited to metal-working and textile factories located on feudal 
estates and required some help from English and Dutch advisers. 
The largest industrial concerns of the seventeenth century were 
owned by the Stroganov trading family. In the first quarter of the 
eighteenth century, Peter the Great applied Western technology 
more widely to establish larger textile, metallurgical, and naval 
plants for his military ventures. This first centralized plan for Rus- 
sian industrialization built some of the largest, best-equipped fac- 
tories of the time, using mosdy forced peasant labor. After a decline 
in the middle of the eighteenth century, Russian industry received 
another injection of Western ideas and centralized organization 
under Catherine the Great. Under Catherine, Russia's iron in- 
dustry became the largest in the world. 

Another major stage in Russian industry began with the eman- 
cipation of the serfs in 1861, creating what would eventually be- 
come a large industrial labor force. When he became tsar in 1881 , 
Alexander III used this resource in a new, large-scale industriali- 
zation program aimed at finally changing Russia from a primarily 
agricultural country into a modern industrial nation. Lasting un- 
til 1914, the program depended on massive assistance from western 
Europe. From 1881 to 1914, the greatest expansion occurred in 
textiles, coal, and metallurgy, centered in the Moscow area and 
the present-day Ukrainian Republic (see fig. 1). But compared with 



486 



Industry 



the West, major industrial gaps remained throughout the prerevolu- 
tionary period. 

Beginning in 1904, industry was diverted and disrupted by for- 
eign wars, strikes, revolutions, and civil war. After the Civil War 
(1918-21), the victorious Bolsheviks (see Glossary) fully national- 
ized industry; at that point, industrial production was 13 percent 
of the 1913 level. To restart the economy, in 1921 Vladimir I. Lenin 
introduced the New Economic Policy (NEP — see Glossary), which 
returned light industry to private enterprise but retained govern- 
ment control over heavy industry. By 1927 NEP had returned many 
industries to their prewar levels. Under Stalin, the First Five- Year 
Plan began in 1928. This planning system brought spectacular in- 
dustrial growth, especially in capital investment. More important, 
it laid the foundation for centralized industrial planning, which con- 
tinued into the late 1980s. Heavy industry received much greater 
investment than light industry throughout the Stalin period. Al- 
though occasional plans emphasized consumer goods more strongly, 
considerations of national security usually militated against such 
changes. 

Industry was again diverted and displaced by World War II, 
and many enterprises moved permanently eastward, into or be- 
yond the Ural Mountains. Postwar recovery was rapid as a result 
of the massive application of manpower and funds. Heavy indus- 
try again grew rapidly through the 1960s, especially in fuel and 
energy branches. But this growth was followed by a prolonged slow- 
down beginning in the late 1960s. Successive five-year plans resulted 
in no substantial improvement in the growth rate of industrial 
production (see table 32, Appendix A). Policy makers began review- 
ing the usefulness of centralized planning in a time of advanced, 
fast-moving technology. By 1986 General Secretary Mikhail S. 
Gorbachev was making radical suggestions for restructuring the 
industrial system. 

Industrial Resources 

Although plentiful raw materials and labor are available to Soviet 
industrial planners, geographic factors are especially important in 
determining how these resources are used. Because the main 
resources are available in an uneven pattern, industrial policy has 
produced uneven results. Innovative recombination of labor, fuels, 
and other raw materials has had some success but has also met sub- 
stantial resistance. 

Raw Materials 

In 1980 the Soviet Union produced about 20 percent of total 
world industrial output, and it led the world in producing oil, cast 



487 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

iron, steel, coke, mineral fertilizers, locomotives, tractors, and ce- 
ment. This leadership was based on self-sufficiency in nearly all 
major industrial raw materials, including iron ore, most nonferrous 
metals, solid and liquid fuels, water power, and minerals. The coun- 
try has at least some reserves of every industrially valuable non- 
fuel mineral, although tin, tungsten, and mercury are present only 
in small quantities and bauxite is imported for the aluminum in- 
dustry. Despite these material advantages, the country's geogra- 
phy hinders exploitation. Large portions of the remaining coal, oil, 
natural gas, metal ores, and minerals are located in inaccessible 
regions with hostile climates. 

Geographic Location Factors 

Historically, Soviet industry has been concentrated in the Eu- 
ropean sector, where intensive development has depleted critical 
resources. Examples of severely reduced resources in the older in- 
dustrial regions are the Krivoy Rog and Magnitogorsk iron deposits 
and the Donbass coal area, upon which major industrial complex- 
es were built. Long before the German invasion of 1941, Soviet 
industrial policy looked eastward into Siberia and Soviet Central 
Asia to expand the country's material base. According to a 1977 
Soviet study, 90 percent of remaining energy resources (fuels and 
water power) are east of the Urals; however, 80 percent of indus- 
try and nearly 80 percent of all energy requirements are in the 
European part of the Soviet Union. Since 1917 an official policy 
goal has been to bring all Soviet regions to a similar level of eco- 
nomic development. Periodically, leaders have proclaimed the full 
achievement of this goal. But in a country of extremely diverse cli- 
mates, nationalities, and natural resources, such equality remains 
only a theoretical concept. Industrial expansion has meant find- 
ing ways to join raw materials, power, labor, and transportation 
at the same place and in suitable proportions. For example, many 
eastern regions have abundant resources, but the labor supply either 
is too small or is culturally disinclined to work in modern industry 
(see Distribution and Density, ch. 3). 

The Territorial Production Complexes and Geographic Expansion 

One Soviet answer to the problem of the location of industry 
has been the concept of the territorial production complex, which 
groups industries to efficiently share materials, energy, machinery, 
and labor. Although plans call for such complexes (see Glossary) 
in all parts of the Soviet Union, in the late 1980s the most fully 
developed examples were chiefly to the east of the Urals or in the 
Far North; many were in remote areas of Siberia or the Soviet Far 



488 



Park in Moscow with a permanent exhibition praising the 
economic achievements of the Soviet people 
Courtesy Irene Steckler 

East. The complexes vary in size and specialization, but most are 
based near cheap local fuel or a hydroelectric power source. An 
example is the South Yakut complex, halfway between Lake Baykal 
and the Pacific Ocean. This industrial center is based on rich 
deposits of iron and coking coal, the key resources for metallurgy. 
Oil and natural gas deposits exist not far to the north, and the area 
is connected with the Trans-Siberian Railway and the Baikal- Amur 
Main Line. An entirely new city, Neryungri, was built as an ad- 
ministrative center, and a number of auxiliary plants were designed 
to make the complex self-sufficient and to support the iron- and 
coal-mining operations. The temperature varies by 85 °C from 
winter to summer, the terrain is forbidding, and working condi- 
tions are hazardous. But considering that the alternative is many 
separate, isolated industrial sites with the same conditions, the ter- 
ritorial production complex seems a rational approach to reach the 
region's resources. Integrating several industries in a single com- 
plex requires cooperation among many top-level Soviet bureaucra- 
cies, but in the early 1980s the lack of such cooperation delayed 
progress at centers such as the South Yakut complex. 

Starting in the 1960s, the government pursued large-scale in- 
centive programs to move workers into the three main Soviet 



489 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

undeveloped regions: Siberia, Central Asia, and the Far East. Such 
programs justified bonuses for workers by saving the cost of trans- 
porting raw materials to the European sector. At the same time, 
some policy makers from other parts of the country had not sup- 
ported redesignation of funds from their regions to the eastern 
projects. In 1986 the Siberian Development Program was launched 
for coordinated, systematic development of fuel and mineral 
resources through the year 2000. Despite specific plans, movement 
of Soviet labor to the undeveloped regions has generally fallen short 
of plans since the peak migration of World War II. Poor living 
and working conditions have caused 4 'labor flight" from Siberian 
construction projects. By 1988 there were strong hints that inten- 
sified development would again be emphasized in the more acces- 
sible industrial centers west of the Urals and that more selective 
investment would be made in projects to the east and southeast 
of that boundary. 

The Labor Force and Perestroika 

The nature of the work force has a direct impact on industrial 
policy. In 1985 nearly 75 percent of the nonagricultural work force 
was making material goods, and that percentage was shrinking very 
slowly as nonmanufacturing service occupations expanded. The 
rate of the shift away from manufacturing actually was decreasing 
during the 1980s. Meanwhile, one-third of industrial workers re- 
mained in low-skilled, manual jobs through the 1980s, and slow 
population growth was limiting the growth of the work force. 
Nevertheless, significant groups of workers were better educated 
and more comfortable with mechanized and automated manufac- 
turing than the previous generation. In the late 1980s, labor short- 
ages were expected to stimulate faster automation of some 
industries. Official modernization plans called for eliminating 5 
million manual jobs by the year 1990 and 20 million by the year 
2000, and reductions were targeted for specific industries. Reduc- 
tions in the labor force could not always be planned for areas where 
available labor was decreasing naturally. This situation meant that 
job elimination could bring unemployment in some places — 
especially since most of the jobs eliminated would be those requir- 
ing the least skill. Because unemployment theoretically cannot exist 
in a socialist (see Glossary) state, that prospect was a potentially 
traumatic repercussion of the effort at industrial streamlining. 

Poor labor ethics have traditionally undermined Soviet indus- 
trial programs. Gorbachev's perestroika made individual productivity 
a major target in the drive to streamline industry in the late 1980s. 
But the goal met substantial resistance among ordinary workers 



490 



Industry 



because it called for pegging wages directly to productivity and 
eliminating guaranteed wage levels and bonuses. 

Thus, the Soviet Union possessed a vast labor base that was very 
uneven in quality. In economic plans for the last decade of the twen- 
tieth century, planners placed top priority on redistributing all 
resources — human and material — to take advantage of their 
strengths. The drive for redistribution coincided with an attempt 
to streamline the organization of the industrial system. 

Industrial Organization 

Beginning with the First Five- Year Plan (1928-32), Soviet in- 
dustry was directed by a complicated, centralized system that proved 
increasingly inflexible as its equipment base became more sophisti- 
cated. Major problems arose in allocation of resources between mili- 
tary and civilian sectors, centralized planning of diverse industries, 
and systemic changes that would make industry responsive to rapid 
technological developments. 

The Complexes and the Ministries 

In the late 1980s, industry was officially divided into seven in- 
dustrial complexes, each complex (see Glossary) responsible for one 
or more sectors of production. The seven complexes, which were 
directly responsible to the Council of Ministers, were agro- 
industrial, chemicals and timber, construction, fuel and energy, 
machine building, light industry, and metallurgy. The Ministry 
of Light Industry was the only ministry in its complex and was 
intended as the foundation for a consumer industry complex, 
dubbed the ' 'social complex" by the government. The remaining 
six complexes included several ministries to oversee one broad type 
of industry. For example, the fuel and energy complex included 
the all-union ministries of atomic power, coal, construction of 
petroleum and gas enterprises, the gas industry, the petroleum in- 
dustry, and power and electrification. The ministry system included 
three types of organization: all-union (national level only), union- 
republic (national and republic levels), and republic (to run industry 
indigenous to a single republic). Ministries in the construction 
materials, light industry, nonferrous metallurgy, and timber com- 
plexes were in the union-republic ministry category. But machine 
building had all-union ministries because unified national policy 
and standards were considered critical in that field. Ministries with 
major military output fell outside this ministry structure, under 
the superministerial direction of the Military Industrial Commis- 
sion. That body oversaw all stages of defense industry, from research 



491 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

to production, plus the acquisition and application of foreign tech- 
nology (see Military Industries and Production, ch. 18). 

The Industrial Planning System 

Industrial policy statements were issued by the CPSU at party 
congresses (see Glossary). A typical statement came from the 
Twenty- Seventh Party Congress in 1986: "In accelerating scien- 
tific and technical progress, a leading role is assigned to machine 
building, which must be raised to the highest technical level in the 
shortest possible time." In reaching such broad goals, the top plan- 
ning level was the Council of Ministers, which represented the all- 
union ministries included in the seven industrial complexes. The 
council's decisions were passed to the State Planning Committee 
(Gosudarstvennyi planovyi komitet — Gosplan), which formulated 
specific programs to realize broad party goals. Then programs 
moved down through the bureaucracy to individual enterprises (see 
Glossary), and recommendations and changes were made along 
the way. The programs then reversed direction, returning to the 
Council of Ministers for final approval. The final planning form 
was the five-year plan, a concept originated by Stalin in 1928 (see 
The Twelfth Five- Year Plan, 1986-90, ch. 11; table 30, Appen- 
dix A). 

After the First Five- Year Plan, planning was completely cen- 
tralized in the all-union ministries. In day-to-day operations, this 
system consistently delayed interministry cooperation in such mat- 
ters as equipment delivery and construction planning. An exam- 
ple was electric power plant construction. Planners relied on timely 
delivery of turbines from a machine plant, whose planners in turn 
relied on timely delivery of semifinished rolled and shaped metal 
pieces from a metallurgical combine (see Glossary). Any change 
in specifications or quantities required approval by all the minis- 
tries and intermediate planning bodies in the power, machine, and 
metallurgical industries — a formidable task under the best of cir- 
cumstances. 

Structural Reform of Industry 

Perestroika called for wholesale revision of the industrial manage- 
ment system and decentralization of policy making in all indus- 
tries. Elements of the management bureaucracy opposed such 
revision because it would place direct responsibility for poor per- 
formance and initiative on industry officials. Initial adjustment to 
the program was slow and uneven; in the late 1980s, tighter qual- 
ity control cut production figures by eliminating substandard items. 
In mid- 1988, eighteen months after perestroika had been introduced 



492 



Industry 



in major industries, official Soviet sources admitted that much of 
the program was not yet in place. 

The Military-Industrial Complex 

Growth in the Soviet economy slowed to 2 percent annually in 
the late 1970s, and it remained at about that level during the 1980s, 
after averaging 5 percent during the previous three decades. Be- 
cause military supply remained the primary mission of industry, 
the military was protected from the overall slowdown. Thus, in 
1988 the military share of the gross national product (GNP — see 
Glossary) had grown to an estimated 15 to 17 percent, up from 
its 12 to 14 percent share in 1970. The actual percentage of indus- 
trial resources allocated to military production has always been un- 
clear because of Soviet secrecy about military budgets. Most military 
production came under the eighteen ministries of the machine- 
building and metal-working complex (MBMW), nine of which were 
primarily involved in making weapons or military materiel (see 
table 33, Appendix A). 

Other "military-related" ministries sent a smaller percentage 
of their output to the military. Among their contributions were 
trucks (from the Ministry of Automotive and Agricultural Machine 
Building, under MBMW), tires and fuels (from the Ministry of 
Petroleum Refining and Petrochemical Industry, outside MBMW), 
and generators (from the Ministry of Power Machinery Building, 
under MBMW), plus any other items requested by the military. 
In overall control of this de facto structure was the Defense Coun- 
cil (see Glossary), which in the 1980s was chaired by the general 
secretary of the CPSU. Although the Council of Ministers nomi- 
nally controlled all ministries, including those serving the military, 
military issues transcended that authority. In 1987 an estimated 
450 research and development organizations were working exclu- 
sively on military projects. Among top-priority projects were a 
multiministerial laser program, generation of radio-frequency 
energy, and particle-beam research — all applicable to future battle- 
field weapons. In addition, about fifty major weapons design 
bureaus and thousands of plants were making military items ex- 
clusively. Such plants had first priority in resource allocation to 
ensure that production goals were met. Most defense plants were 
in the European part of the Soviet Union, were well dispersed, and 
had duplicate backup plants. Some major aircraft plants were be- 
yond the Urals, in Irkutsk, Novosibirsk, Tashkent, Komsomol'sk- 
na-Amure, and Ulan-Ude. 

In making military equipment, the primary goals were simplic- 
ity and reliability; parts were standardized and kept to a minimum. 



493 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

New designs used as many existing parts as possible to maximize 
performance predictability. Because of these practices, the least ex- 
perienced Soviet troops and troops of countries to which the equip- 
ment was sold could operate it. But the practices have also caused 
the Soviet military-industrial complex, despite having top priority, 
to suffer from outmoded capital equipment, much of which is left 
over from World War II. Western observers have suggested that 
the dated ■ 'keep-it-simple" philosophy has been a psychological 
obstacle to introducing the sophisticated production systems needed 
for high-technology military equipment. 

Western experts have assumed that without substantial overall 
economic expansion, this huge military-industrial complex would 
remain a serious resource drain on civilian industry — although the 
degree of that drain has been difficult to establish. To ameliorate 
the situation, perestroika set a goal of sharply reducing the military 
share of MBMW allocations (estimated at 60 percent in 1987) dur- 
ing the Twelfth Five- Year Plan. Civilian MBMW ministries were 
to receive an 80 percent investment increase by 1992. And em- 
phasis was shifting to technology sharing by military designers with 
their civilian counterparts — breaking down the isolation in which 
the two sectors have traditionally worked. 

Industrial Research and Design 

The Soviet Union has long recognized the importance of its 
domestic research and development system to make its industry 
competitive. Soviet research and development relies on a complex 
system of institutes, design bureaus, and individual plant research 
facilities to provide industry with advanced equipment and method- 
ology (see Research, Development, and Production Organizations, 
ch. 16). A result of the system's complexity has been poor coordi- 
nation both among research organizations and between research 
organizations and other industrial organizations. Botdenecks ex- 
isted because much research was classified and because Soviet in- 
formation distribution systems, e.g., computers and copying 
machines, lagged far behind the West. 

A barrier between theoretical and applied research also hindered 
the contribution of the scientific research institutes (nauchno- 
issledovatel 'skie instituty — Nils) to industry. Institutes under the 
Academy of Sciences (see Glossary), which emphasized theoreti- 
cal research, often did not contribute their findings direcdy for prac- 
tical application, and an institutional distrust has existed be- 
tween scientists and industrial technicians. Newer organizational 
structures, such as scientific production associations (nauchno- 
proizvodstvennye ob"edineniia — NPOs), have combined research, 



494 



Industry 



design, and production facilities so that technical improvements 
will move into the production phase faster. This goal was an im- 
portant part of perestroika in the late 1980s. It was especially criti- 
cal in the machine-building industry, for which a central goal of 
the Twelfth Five-Year Plan was to shorten installation time of new 
industrial machines once they were designed. 

Soviet industrial planning was aimed at being competitive with 
the West in both civilian and military industry. After years of lag- 
ging growth, by the mid-1980s authorities had recognized that the 
traditional Stalinist industrial system made such goals unreachable. 
But improvement of that system was problematic for several rea- 
sons. New emphasis on the civilian sector could not be allowed to 
jeopardize military production; research and development was never 
connected efficiently with industrial operations; the huge indus- 
trial bureaucracy contained vested interests at all levels; and per- 
sonal responsibility and individual initiative were concepts alien 
to the Soviet Marxist-Leninist system. The most optimistic Western 
forecasters predicted gradual improvements in some areas, as op- 
posed to the dramatic, irreversible changes suggested by the Soviet 
industrial doctrine of the late 1980s. 

Machine Building and Metal Working 

As the supplier of production machinery to all other branches 
of heavy industry, the machine-building and metal- working industry 
has stood at the center of modernization efforts, and its support 
of the military has been especially critical (see Industrial Organi- 
zation, this ch.). But because of the systemic problems discussed 
earlier, in the late 1980s substantial inertia remained in machine 
building. Progress in one program was often negated by a bottle- 
neck in another, and all industry felt the impact of this uneven per- 
formance. 

The Structure and Status of the Machine-Building and Metal- 
Working Complex 

In 1987 the machine-building industrial complex, one of the seven 
industrial complexes, included 300 branches and subbranches and 
a network of 700 research and planning organizations. Official- 
ly designated the machine-building and metal-working complex 
(MBMW), it was the most inclusive and varied industrial com- 
plex. Its three major types of products, were military hardware, 
consumer durables, and industrial machinery and equipment. In 
1989 eighteen ministries were included, manufacturing a wide range 
of machinery; nine of the ministries chiefly produced military 
weapons or materiel. Ministries within MBMW often split the 



495 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

jurisdiction within a particular specialization. For example, although 
instrument manufacture fell mainly under MBMW's Ministry of 
Instrument Making, its Ministry of the Aviation Industry and 
Ministry of the Shipbuilding Industry controlled manufacture of 
the instruments they used in their products. The contributions of 
MBMW included machines for mining, agriculture, and road build- 
ing; equipment for conventional and nuclear power plants; oil and 
gas drilling and pumping equipment; and metal- working machines 
for all branches, including the military. In the mid-1980s, restruc- 
turing in the machine industry was a central theme of perestroika 
because most industries needed to update their machine stock. 
Western studies in the 1980s showed that 40 to 60 percent of in- 
dustrial production was earmarked for military uses. In the 1980s, 
government policy encouraged industry to buy domestic machinery 
to counter a frequent preference for more reliable foreign equip- 
ment. (A 1985 study by MBMW's Ministry of Heavy Machine 
Building said that 50 percent of that ministry's basic products did 
not meet operational requirements.) In the late 1970s and early 
1980s, the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) sent half 
its machine exports to the Soviet Union. At the same time, Soviet 
machine exports fell behind machine imports, after exports had 
reached a peak in 1970. 

The Planning and Investment Process of the Machine-Building 
and Metal-Working Complex 

The Twelfth Five-Year Plan (1986-90) called for drastic produc- 
tion increases in the sectors producing instruments, machine tools, 
electrical equipment, chemicals, and agricultural machines. Fun- 
damental investment changes were expected to raise machine 
production to new highs. Overall investment in the machine- 
building industry was to be 80 percent higher than in the Eleventh 
Five-Year Plan (1981-85). A crucial goal was to shorten the time 
between research breakthroughs and their industrial application, 
which had been a chronic bottleneck in the modernization of in- 
dustry. Another goal of the Twelfth Five-Year Plan was to improve 
the quality of individual components and spare parts because their 
short service life was diverting too much metal to making replace- 
ment parts. In the mid-1980s, however, severe delivery delays con- 
tinued for both spare parts and new machines ordered by various 
industries. Perestroika attempted to simplify the system and to fix 
responsibility for delays. As the largest consumer of steel in the 
country, MBMW had felt the impact of severe production problems 
in the metallurgy industry (see Metallurgy, this ch.). Automation 
was expected to add speed and precision to production lines. By 



496 



Industry 



1987 nearly half of metal-cutting machine production was done with 
digital program control. New control complexes stressed microcom- 
puters with high production capacity and low material require- 
ments. Nevertheless, a 1987 Soviet study showed that 40 percent 
of the robots in machine plants were not working at all, and a 1986 
study demonstrated that only 20 percent of the robots were provid- 
ing the expected production advantages. A long-term (through the 
year 2000) cooperative program with the other members of the 
Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon) was expected 
to contribute new ideas for streamlining the Soviet machine-building 
industry (see Appendix B). 

The Location of the Machine-Building Industry 

Traditionally, the Soviet machine-building industries have been 
centered in the European part of the Soviet Union; large plants 
are located in Moscow, Leningrad, Khar'kov, Minsk, Gor'kiy, 
Saratov, and in cities in the Urals. In the 1980s, the industry was 
gradually adding major centers in the Kazakh Republic and other 
areas in Soviet Central Asia, Siberia, and the Soviet Far East. The 
instrument-building sector was more dispersed and had centers in 
Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Voronezh, Orel, Ryazan', Kazan', 
Gor'kiy, Riga, Minsk, Tbilisi, Chelyabinsk, Tomsk, and Frunze. 
Agricultural machines were produced near major crop areas. Ex- 
amples of this concentration were Khar'kov in the Ukrainian 
Republic; Minsk in the Belorussian Republic; Lipetsk, Vladimir, 
Volgograd, and Chelyabinsk in the western Russian Republic; the 
Altai region in the eastern Russian Republic; and Pavlodar in the 
Kazakh Republic. Because low crop yield has been a chronic 
problem, the agricultural equipment industry has emphasized large 
mechanized tractor and harvester units that can cover vast, low- 
yield tracts economically. 

The Automotive Industry 

The Soviet automotive industry has developed on a much smaller 
scale than its United States counterpart. Although production grew 
rapidly during the 1970s and 1980s, the industry's close connec- 
tion with the military made some production data inaccessible. From 
1970 to 1979, automobile production grew by nearly 1 million units 
per year, and truck production grew by 250,000 per year. The 
production ratio of automobiles to trucks increased in that time 
from 0.7 to 1.7, indicating that more attention was being given 
to the consumer market. 

Automobile production was concentrated in four facilities: 
the Volga (in Tol'yatti), Gor'kiy, Zaporozh'ye, and Likhachev 



497 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



^Cherepovets 



® 

Moscow^ 




&m) ®-L/pete* 



(^•Makeyevka 



®. 

>Tol'yatti 



M) Nizhniy 
•Tagil 7 



TURKEY 



.SYRIA 
IRAQV 



- International boundary 
National capital 
Populated place 
Automotive center 
Metallurgical center 

200 400 Kilometers 



200 



400 Miles 



Magnitogorsk , 



Chelyabinsk 




W« Ors/c 



Boundary representation 
not necessarily authoritative 



Figure 15. Automotive and Metallurgical Production Centers in the 
Western Soviet Union, 1988 



(Moscow) plants (see fig. 15). The Volga plant was built in the 
late 1960s especially for passenger automobiles; by 1975 it was mak- 
ing half the Soviet total. The Likhachev and Gor'kiy plants, both 
in operation for more than fifty years, made automobiles and trucks. 
Truck production was less centralized, with plants in Kutaisi 
(Georgian Republic), the Urals, Tiraspol' (Moldavian Republic), 
Kremenchug (Ukrainian Republic), Minsk (Belorussian Repub- 
lic), Mytishchi (Moscow area), and Naberezhnyye Chelny (eastern 
Russian Republic), the site of the large showpiece Kama plant built 
in the late 1970s. The Volga and Kama plants were located away 
from the established population centers; in both cases, new towns 
were built for transplanted workers. Long-term truck planning 
(through the year 2000) emphasized large capacity, fuel economy, 
and service life; the last two qualities were deficient in earlier 
models. The drive for fuel economy has encouraged the use of na- 
tural and liquefied gas. Heavy truck and trailer production was 
to occupy more than 40 percent of the truck industry by 1990, dou- 
bling tractor- trailer production. Vehicle parts plants were widely 
dispersed in the European sector of the country. Policy for the Soviet 
automotive industry has emphasized two divergent goals: increas- 
ing the supply of private automobiles as a symbol of attention to 
the consumer; and supporting heavy industry with improved equip- 
ment for heavy transport and material handling. 



498 



Industry 



The Electronics Industry 

Because of the drive for automation and modernization of produc- 
tion processes, the electronics industry increasingly supported many 
other industrial branches. Special emphasis was given to improv- 
ing cooperation between electronics plants and the machine-building 
and metallurgy branches — a partnership severely hindered in many 
cases by the industrial bureaucracy. In official progress reports, 
all industries listed process automation and robotization as stan- 
dards for efficiency and expansion, and conversion from manual 
processes has been a prime indicator of progress in heavy indus- 
try. At the same time, government policy has relied heavily on the 
electronics industry for televisions, recording equipment, and radios 
for the consumer market. None of those items came close to planned 
production quotas for 1987, however. 

Beginning in the 1970s, the most important role of the electron- 
ics industry has been to supply lasers, optics, and computers and 
to perform research and development on other advanced equip- 
ment for weapons guidance, communications, and space systems. 
The importance of electronics for civilian industry has led to in- 
terministry research organizations that encourage the advanced 
military design sector to share technology with its civilian coun- 
terpart. Such an organization was called an interbranch scientific- 
technical complex (mezhotraslevoi nauchno-tekhnicheskii kompleks — 
MNTK). It united the research and production organizations of 
several ministries and had broad coordination control over the de- 
velopment of new technologies. Because of the military uses of 
Soviet electronics, the West has had incomplete specific data about 
it. In the early 1980s, an estimated 40 percent of Soviet electron- 
ics research projects had benefited substantially from the transfer 
of Western and Japanese technology. In the late 1980s, however, 
Soviet electronics trailed the West and Japan in most areas of ap- 
plied electronics, although circuit design and systems engineering 
programs were comparable. The Soviet theoretical computer base 
was strong, but equipment and programming were below Western 
standards. Problems have been chronic in advanced fields such as 
ion implantation and microelectronics testing. The branches desig- 
nated by Soviet planners as most critical in the 1980s were indus- 
trial robots and manipulators, computerized control systems for 
industrial machines, and semiconductors for computer circuits. 

Metallurgy 

Soviet industrial plans through the year 2000 have emphasized 
greater variety and higher quality in metals production to keep 
heavy industry competitive with the West. But the machinery and 



499 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

production systems available to Soviet metallurgists in 1989 showed 
no signs of improving the inconsistent record the industry had es- 
tablished in meeting such goals. Following the Stalinist pattern, 
great success in some areas was hampered by breakdown in others. 
In the late 1980s, escape from this dilemma seemed no more likely 
than in earlier years. 

Role of Metallurgy 

Since the 1970s, the Soviet Union has led the world in the produc- 
tion of iron, steel, and rolled metals. In 1987 it produced about 
162 million tons of steel, 114 million tons of rolled metal, and 20 
million tons of steel pipe. Each of these figures was an increase 
of more than 2.5 times over those of 1960. Metallurgy has been 
the largest and fastest growing branch of Soviet industry, and metals 
supply remained vital to growth in virtually all other branches of 
industry. But yearly production increases were becoming more 
difficult because the cost of raw materials rose consistently in the 
1980s, especially for metals such as molybdenum, nickel, mag- 
nesium, and rare earth metals, which were in increasing demand 
for high-quality steel alloys. 

In the mid-1980s, the metallurgy industry was not meeting its 
goals for supplying high-quality finished metal to the manufactur- 
ing industries. Those industries were demanding higher-quality and 
stronger metals for new applications, such as high-pressure pipe- 
lines for oil and gas, high-capacity dump trucks and excavators, 
industrial buildings with large roof spans, corrosion-resistant pipe 
for the chemical industry, coated and treated rolled metals, and 
steel with high conductivity for electrical transformers. As military 
equipment became more sophisticated, it too required improved 
quality and performance from metal products. On the development 
side, advances in light-metal alloys using aluminum, magnesium, 
and titanium did provide materials for military aircraft and mis- 
siles that were among the best in the world. 

Metallurgy Planning and Problems 

Plans for the metallurgical industry for the 1990s stressed rebuild- 
ing older steel plants, vastly increasing the volume of continuous 
steel casting, and replacing open-hearth furnaces with oxygen or 
electric furnaces. In the period through the year 2000, a projected 
52 percent of investment was to go for new equipment. This de- 
gree of investment would be a drastic turnaround because from 
1981 to 1985 five times as much money was spent on equipment 
repair as on equipment purchase. Furthermore, to make highly 
pure steel, economical removal of sulfur is critical, but the scarcity 



500 



Industry 



of low-sulfur coking coal requires new purification technology. 
Although Soviet experts agreed that all these steps were necessary 
to enhance the variety and purity of ferrous metallurgy products, 
serious obstacles remained. Bottlenecks were chronic in overall ad- 
ministration, between research and production branches, and be- 
tween the industry and its suppliers in the machine-building sector. 
Meanwhile, a shortage of hard currency (see Glossary) hindered 
the purchase of sophisticated metal-processing equipment from the 
West. 

Bottlenecks have also affected the Donetsk metallurgical plant, 
where a heralded program installed new blast furnaces in the 
mid-1980s but where no auxiliary equipment arrived to run them 
as designed. In many cases, industry spokesmen have blamed the 
research community for neglecting practical applications in favor 
of theoretical projects. Whatever the causes, large-scale improve- 
ment of Soviet metallurgical technology was spotty rather than con- 
sistent during the 1980s. 

Metallurgical Combine Locations and Major Producers 

As production capacity has expanded, iron and steel production 
operations have consolidated in large-scale facilities, designated as 
combines. Among them was the Magnitogorsk metallurgical com- 
bine in the Urals, which in 1989 was the largest Soviet metallurgi- 
cal combine. It produced nearly 16 million tons of metal annually. 
Long-term plans targeted Magnitogorsk for complete moderniza- 
tion of casting operations in the 1990s. Other important metallur- 
gical centers in the Urals were at Chelyabinsk and Nizhniy Tagil. 
The Ukrainian Republic had major combines at Krivoy Rog, 
Zhdanov, Zaporozh'ye, and Makeyevka. The Cherepovets com- 
bine was north of Moscow, the Lipetsk and Oskol combines were 
south of Moscow, and the Orsk-Khalilovo combine was at the 
southern end of the Urals. The European sector was the traditional 
location of Soviet metallurgy because of available labor and mate- 
rials. Newer metallurgical centers at Karaganda (in the Kazakh 
Republic) and the Kuzbass (see Glossary) were in the Asian part 
of the Soviet Union where coking coal was readily available. 
Nevertheless, metal-consuming industries and known iron ore 
reserves remained mainly west of the Urals, and major expansion 
of the metallurgy industry east of the Urals was considered un- 
likely in the near future. 

Nonferrous Metals 

In addition to the ferrous metal (iron and steel) centers, nonfer- 
rous metallurgy also provided vital support for heavy industry, while 



501 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

undergoing technical innovation. The nonferrous branches had al- 
ready expanded into ore-rich regions outside traditional industrial 
regions: copper metallurgy into the Kazakh Republic, the Cauca- 
sus, and Siberia; aluminum into the Kazakh Republic, south-central 
Siberia, and Soviet Central Asia; and nickel into eastern Siberia, 
the Urals, and the Kola Peninsula. The Soviet Union possesses 
abundant supplies of nonferrous metal ores, such as titanium, 
cobalt, chromium, nickel, and molybdenum, used in steel and iron 
alloys. Cobalt and nickel were specially targeted for expansion in 
the 1980s. Lead and zinc mining was projected to expand in the 
Kazakh Republic and other areas in Soviet Central Asia, Siberia, 
and the Soviet Far East. 

Chemicals 

The chemical industry received intensive investment in the five- 
year plans of the 1980s. The long-term goal of the chemical in- 
vestment program was to increase its share of total national indus- 
trial production from the 1975 level of 6.9 percent to 8 percent by 
the year 2000. As denned by Soviet planners, major divisions of 
the industry were basic chemical products; fertilizers and pesticides; 
chemical fibers; plastics and synthetic resins; and detergents, paints, 
and synthetic rubber for making consumer products. 

Plastics 

A vital part of the chemical industry is polymers. The polymer 
industry has been centered in regions where petrochemical raw 
materials were processed: the Volga, Ural, and Central economic 
regions (see fig. 16). Among their other uses, polymers are inter- 
mediate materials in making plastics that can replace metals in 
machinery, construction materials, engines, and pipe. Soviet policy 
recognized that wider use of plastics would mean cheaper, lighter, 
and more durable products for many industries. Therefore, long- 
term plans called for nearly doubling the contribution of synthetic 
resins and plastics to the construction industry by the year 2000. 
However, the Twelfth Five-Year Plan also scheduled a 50 percent 
increase in consumer goods made by the chemical industry. 

Petrochemicals 

Major new petrochemical plants in the 1980s were located at 
Omsk, Tobol'sk, Urengoy, and Surgut in the West Siberia Eco- 
nomic Region and Ufa and Nizhnekamsk in the Volga Economic 
Region. New West Siberia plants were developed as joint ventures 
with Western companies. The huge Tobol'sk plant refined fuels 
and made intermediate products for synthetic rubber and plastics. 



502 



Industry 



The Tomsk complex in the West Siberia Economic Region 
produced 75 percent of Soviet polypropylene. Refineries at Moscow, 
Pavlodar (Kazakh Republic), Baku, and Groznyy (the last two 
based on oil from the Caspian Sea) advanced their motor fuel 
refinement operations to enhance fuel economy (see Fuels, this 
ch.). 

Other Branches of the Chemical Industry 

Some branches of the chemical industry have been located close 
to their raw materials. The chemical fertilizer industry has major 
plants using apatite in the Kola Peninsula, phosphates in the 
southern Kazakhstan Economic Region, and potassium salts in the 
Ural, Ukraine, and Belorussia economic regions. 

Synthetic rubber production increased rapidly in the 1980s, 
providing tires for heavy industrial vehicles and for the increasing 
number of passenger vehicles. Soviet mineral fertilizer production 
led the world in the 1970s; because of agricultural failures, the chem- 
ical industry has been under great pressure to produce more pesti- 
cides, chemical fertilizers, and feed additives. Plans called for a 
70 percent increase in mineral fertilizers from 1980 to 1990. In ad- 
dition, chemical fibers were a growing part of the textile industry, 
which was vital to expanding consumer production. 

Chemical Planning Goals 

Soviet industrial planners have recognized that a high-technology 
chemical industry is indispensable for advancement in both heavy 
and light industry. Although Soviet chemical engineering has ad- 
vanced in such areas as composite materials, which are used to make 
lighter airplanes, and photochemicals, major projects have depended 
heavily on foreign technology. 

Because of the critical role of the chemical industry in techno- 
logical advancement, a major campaign in the 1980s was aimed 
at improving domestic technology and reducing dependence on for- 
eign technology in the chemical and petrochemical industry. In 1984 
thirty- two scientific research institutes were conducting major 
petrochemical research under the academies of sciences. But the 
technical and investment contributions of British, French, Japanese, 
East German, West German, Italian, and Hungarian chemical 
firms remained crucial during that time. Many divisions of Soviet 
industry failed to produce as planned through the early 1980s, and 
massive investment did not have the expected effect. The goal for 
the year 2000 remained an overall increase of 2.4 times the 1980 
level and that required a doubling of investments before 1990. 



503 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 




504 



Industry 



Fuels 

In the 1980s, fuels presented formidable problems for Soviet plan- 
ners. Although the Soviet Union possessed enormous fuel reserves, 
it was difficult to balance extraction and transport costs, even as 
the drive continued for greater production levels. Fuel availability 
was a prime consideration in locating new industry. And long-term 
investment planning faced choices among coal, oil, and natural gas. 
Choices leaned strongly in the late 1980s toward gas over oil be- 
cause of the greater reserves and cheaper transport of gas. Neverthe- 
less, efforts also continued to formulate a ''coal strategy" that would 
return coal to its former prominence. In 1988 about 28 percent 
of total national investment went into the Soviet fuel and energy 
complex, compared with nearly 12 percent in 1980. 

Fuel Resource Base 

The Soviet Union is self- sufficient in the three major fuels that 
drive its industry: coal, natural gas, and oil. It has long been a 
major exporter of oil and gas to its allies and to the West, and hard 
currency from those exports has financed the purchase of critical 
import commodities. In 1985 fuel and energy export provided 60 
percent of Soviet hard-currency income. The question of which 
of the three major fuels should be emphasized has been a matter 
of continuous scrutiny and adjustment in government policy. The 
two largest users of coal are by far the metallurgy and electric power 
industries. Large amounts of oil products go for electric power, 
agriculture, transportation, and export; large amounts of natural 
gas go for electric power, metallurgy, the chemical industry, con- 
struction materials, and export. 

Oil 

After many years of occasionally spectacular growth, Soviet oil 
production began to level off in 1983, although the Soviet Union 
remained the world's largest oil producer. Since that time, Western 
experts have disagreed sharply about the amount and importance 
of production changes, especially because exact Soviet fuel reserve 
figures remained a state secret. It is known that at the end of the 
1980s oil production did not increase significantly from year to year. 

The Tyumen' reserves of western Siberia were a huge discov- 
ery of the 1960s that provided the bulk of oil production increases 
through the 1970s. By the end of that decade, Tyumen' had over- 
taken the Volga-Ural fields as the greatest Soviet oil region. The 
Volga-Ural fields had provided one-half the country's oil in the 
early 1970s but fell to a one-third share in 1977. By the mid-1980s, 



505 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Tyumen' produced 60 percent of Soviet oil, but there was already 
evidence that Tyumen' was approaching peak production. 

Meanwhile, new policies in the early 1980s accelerated drilling 
rates throughout the country, especially in western Siberia, but 
lower yields made this drilling expensive. By 1980 the older oil 
reserves were already being exhausted. Substantial untapped 
reserves were confirmed in the Caspian, Baltic, and Black seas and 
above the Arctic Circle, but all of them contained natural obsta- 
cles that made exploitation expensive. Soviet planners relied on 
the discovery of a major new field comparable to those in western 
Siberia. But by 1987 no major discovery had been made for twenty- 
two years. In the mid-1980s, Soviet oil exploration concentrated 
on the farther reaches of the Tyumen' and Tomsk oblasts (see Glos- 
sary), east of the established western Siberian fields. Offshore drill- 
ing was centered on the Caspian, Barents, and Baltic seas and the 
Sea of Okhotsk. Several shipyards were building offshore drilling 
platforms, the largest being the yards at Astrakhan' and Vyborg. 
Foreign shipyards also provided offshore drilling equipment. In 
1984 the Soviet Union had eleven semisubmersible platforms in 
operation. 

The Soviet oil-drilling industry has relied heavily on Western 
equipment for difficult extraction conditions, which become more 
common as existing reserves dry up. The average service life of 
a Soviet-made drilling rig was ten years, compared with fifteen or 
twenty for comparable Western equipment. Centers of Soviet drill- 
ing rig production were in Volgograd, Sverdlovsk, and Verkhnyaya 
Pyshma, about twenty kilometers north of Sverdlovsk. 

Increased distance from well to consumer was also a major con- 
cern for the oil industry. Ninety percent of oil was transported by 
pipeline. The Soviet oil pipeline system doubled in length between 
1970 and 1983, reaching 76,200 kilometers. Before 1960 the sys- 
tem totaled only 15,000 kilometers of pipe (see Pipelines, ch. 14). 
As oil production leveled off in the 1980s, so did pipeline construc- 
tion. In 1986 the Soviet Union had 81,500 kilometers of pipeline 
for crude and refined oil products (in 1989 the number of kilometers 
remained the same). 

The oil boom of the 1970s in western Siberia brought rapid 
growth of Soviet oil-refining centers. In 1983 most of the fifty-three 
refineries were west of the Urals. At least five new facilities were 
built between 1970 and 1985. Soviet refining equipment fell below 
Western standards for such higher- grade fuels as gasoline, so that 
high-octane fuels were scarce and heavier petroleum products were 
in surplus. 



506 



The 2,000,000th 
harvester produced 
in Rostov -na-Donu, Russian 
Republic, where more 
than 80 percent of the 
country 3 s harvesters are made 
Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 




Natural Gas 

Natural gas replaced oil as the "growth fuel" of the Soviet Union 
in the early 1980s. Gas is cheaper than oil to extract, and Soviet 
gas deposits are estimated to be three times larger than oil deposits. 
In 1983 an output of 536 billion cubic meters of gas put the Soviet 
Union ahead of the United States in gas production for the first 
time. In 1987 that figure rose to 727 billion cubic meters. As with 
oil, the majority of natural gas production (85 percent in 1965) 
came from the European sector until the 1970s. In that decade, 
the Volga-Ural and Central Asian fields dominated, but by 1983 
western Siberia provided nearly 50 percent of Soviet natural gas. 
That area's Urengoy field was the largest in the world; its reserves 
were estimated at 7.8 trillion cubic meters. 

Because of transport distance and harsh climate, fuel extraction 
in western Siberia is a monumental undertaking that becomes more 
formidable as the industry moves northward. Although high-power 
pumping stations are necessary to move gas over long distances, 
in the late 1980s the Soviet machine-building industry was not 
providing adequate equipment to maintain a steady flow through 
some of the major lines. The chief development target after Urengoy 
was the Yamburg field, directly to its north. Then, after 1990, major 
work was to begin in the Yamal Peninsula, for which preparations 
began in the late 1980s. But cost and environmental concerns 



507 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

delayed the Yamal project in 1989. Because growth targets were 
based on the timely opening of large Yamal deposits, the delay was 
potentially a very serious setback. The center of the older Volga- 
Ural fields is Orenburg; other major gas fields are located in the 
Uzbek, Turkmen, and Ukrainian republics. 

Soviet industrial planners were replacing oil with gas widely and 
successfully, and proportional investment in gas increased drasti- 
cally in the late 1970s and 1980s. In 1988 the shares of oil and gas 
in the fuel balance were equal (at 39 percent) for the first time. 
Gas was also a vital export product. The main instrument of gas 
export policy was the pipeline connecting Urengoy (and, projected 
for 1990, the Yamburg field) with Western Europe. This line began 
pumping gas to four West European countries (Austria, France, 
Italy, and the Federal Republic of Germany [West Germany]) in 
1984, despite strong opposition from the United States. Delivery 
was scheduled to increase to a steady rate of 57 billion cubic meters 
per year by 1990. In 1988 total Soviet gas exports reached 88 bil- 
lion cubic meters, after adding Greece, Turkey, and Switzerland 
to the customer list. Meanwhile, pipeline reliability became a serious 
problem; hasty construction and poor maintenance caused many 
accidents and breakdowns in the system. 

Coal 

For about 150 years, coal was the dominant fuel in Russian and 
later in Soviet industry, and many industrial centers were located 
near coal deposits. In the 1960s, oil and gas replaced coal as the 
dominant fuel when plentiful, accessible supplies of these fuels were 
discovered. But coal remained an important energy source for much 
of Soviet industry. Total coal reserves, estimated in 1983 at 6.8 
trillion tons, were the largest in the world, and since 1980 expanded 
coal production has been a standard goal of industrial planners. 
In the mid-1980s, approximately 40 percent of coal went to power- 
plant boiler units (steam coal) and 20 percent to metallurgy (cok- 
ing coal). The rest went for export, to other industries, and to house- 
holds. Shaft mines provided 60 percent of total production, surface 
mines the remainder. 

Historically, the most important coal region has been the Don- 
bass, on which the metallurgical industry was centered because of 
the cheap, plentiful coking coal it offered. Other traditional coking- 
coal centers were the Kuzbass in western Siberia and the Karaganda 
Basin in the northern Kazakh Republic. As deeper excavation and 
reclamation operations raised the cost of Donbass coal, other centers 
challenged its position as chief producer of coking coal. The sec- 
ond largest coal center in the European sector of the Soviet Union 



508 



Industry 



was the Pechora Basin, where shaft mines were less deep and labor 
productivity much higher than in the Donbass. In most of the Euro- 
pean sector, shaft mines had to be dug deeper, seams were grow- 
ing thinner, and methane concentration was higher. Despite these 
conditions, in the late 1980s shaft mines were still providing 75 
percent of high-quality coking coal. 

The highest cost factor in Soviet coal production was transpor- 
tation. Even when extraction was very expensive, regions such as 
the Donbass and the Moscow Basin remained practical because 
they were so close to the metallurgical centers they served. Con- 
versely, Kuzbass coal extraction was cheap, but its high-quality 
coking coal had to be transported long distances to industrial centers 
(for example, 2,200 kilometers to the Magnitogorsk metallurgical 
center). Transport distance also required that new thermoelectric 
plants be located near the coal and water resources that fueled their 
steam boilers. In the late 1980s, Soviet coal experts called for gradu- 
ally less reliance on the Donbass and increased emphasis on the 
Kuzbass. Increased investment at the Donbass had failed to main- 
tain production levels, indicating the necessity of this step. But rail 
transport costs from the Kuzbass and Siberia would rise steeply 
with added volume. Experimental slurry lines were opened in 1988 
to provide possible alternative long-distance coal transport to the 
west. 

Future growth in coal production must come from east of the 
Urals, where an estimated 75 percent of the country's reserves lie. 
Most Siberian coal can be strip-mined, making production costs 
much lower and labor productivity much higher than shaft min- 
ing. Between 1977 and 1983, production in the Soviet Union's 
European basins fell by 32 million tons annually, and by the 1970s 
rail movement of coal westward across the Urals had doubled. To 
minimize transportation costs, major new power stations were built 
in the Kansko- Achinsk and Ekibastuz coal basins, whose low-quality 
brown coal, a cheap fuel, breaks down rapidly if transported over 
long distances. Coal from those mines required extensive process- 
ing before being burned in thermoelectric plants. By the year 2000, 
Kansko- Achinsk may be the most productive Soviet coal basin, with 
a planned yield of 400 million tons per year. The largest Soviet 
strip mine, Bogatyr, is located at Ekibastuz. 

In the mid-1980s, low coal quality was still a major problem be- 
cause efficient processing equipment was scarce. Huge reserves re- 
mained untapped in Siberia because of remoteness and low quality, 
but in the 1980s the South Yakut Basin in eastern Siberia was being 
developed with Japanese technical aid. 



509 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 
Uranium 

In 1988 little was known specifically about the Soviet uranium 
industry. Nevertheless, foreign observers did know that the coun- 
try possessed large, varied deposits that provided fuel for its fast- 
growing nuclear power program. 

Power Engineering 

Traditionally, generation and distribution of electrical power have 
been a high priority of Soviet industrial policy. The main genera- 
tors of power, in order of importance, were thermoelectric plants 
burning fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas, and peat), nuclear power 
plants, and hydroelectric stations. The power industry has been 
one of the fastest growing branches of the economy; in 1985 power 
production reached 58 percent that of the United States. But the 
complexity and size of the country has made timely delivery of elec- 
tricity a difficult problem. Huge areas of the northwestern Soviet 
Union, Siberia, the Soviet Far East, and Soviet Central Asia re- 
mained unconnected to the country's central power grid. Because 
the largest power- generating fuel reserves are located far from in- 
dustrial centers, geography has limited the options of Soviet pol- 
icy markers. In the early 1980s, power shortages were still frequent 
in the heavily industrialized European sector, where conventional 
fuel reserves were being fully used. Soviet policy depended heav- 
ily on large generating plants operating more hours per day than 
those in the West. 

Energy Planning Goals 

In 1986 the stated goals of Soviet energy policy were ambitious 
ones. The share of nuclear power was to increase drastically, and 
new, large-capacity nuclear plants were to be built, mainly in the 
European sector. Expansion of the natural gas industry was to con- 
tribute more of that fuel to power generation. More coal was to 
be available to thermoelectric stations from surface mining in re- 
mote fuel-and-power complexes such as Kansko-Achinsk and 
Ekibastuz, and larger thermoelectric stations were to be built near 
coal deposits. More hydroelectric plants were planned on rivers 
in Siberia, Soviet Central Asia, and the Soviet Far East. Ultra- 
high- voltage, long-distance power lines (including the longest in 
the world) would link thermoelectric power stations in Asia with 
European and Ural industrial centers and would connect Soviet 
nuclear plants with Warsaw Pact allies (see Appendix C). Better 
equipment was to limit power losses occurring over such lines. And 
alternative, renewable power sources such as wind and solar energy 



510 



Industry 



were to be exploited for small-scale local needs. Because nuclear 
and thermal plants were expected to increase their share of power 
generation, in long-term planning the industry has concentrated 
on making the generating units of these plants larger and more 
efficient. In the European sector, a primary goal has been flexible 
response to high- and low-demand cycles — a feature that nuclear 
plants do not provide. 

The Balance among Energy Sources 

The Twelfth Five-Year Plan called for a period of intense con- 
struction of thermal and nuclear plants. By 1990 nuclear capacity 
was to reach almost 1 .5 times its 1985 level. By the year 2000, most 
large thermal stations were to be capable of burning the abundant 
but low-quality coal mined east of the Urals. Berezovka, the larg- 
est Soviet thermoelectric station yet built, was scheduled to open 
at the Kansko- Achinsk fuel and power complex by 1990. The Uni- 
fied Electrical Power System (see Glossary), which is the central- 
ized energy distribution grid and the showpiece of the Soviet energy 
program, was to be connected with the Central Asian Power Sys- 
tem by 1990, bringing 95 percent of the country's power produc- 
tion into a single distribution network. 

Despite the presence of some of the world's largest hydroelec- 
tric stations, such as Krasnoyarsk, Bratsk, Ust'Tlimsk, and Sayano- 
Shushenskoye, reliance on hydroelectric power is decreasing. All 
large, untapped rivers are east of the Urals — in the Kazakhstan, 
East Siberia, and Far East economic regions — and few major 
hydroelectric projects are planned west of the Urals. Although 
hydroelectric power is renewable and flexible, water levels are sub- 
ject to unpredictable climatic conditions. Plans called for ninety 
new hydroelectric stations to be started between 1990 and 2000. 
The Twelfth Five-Year Plan called for nuclear power to displace 
hydroelectric power by 1990 as the second largest electricity source 
in the Soviet Union. The planned share of nuclear power in the 
national power balance for 1990 was 21 percent, while hydroelectric 
power was already below 15 percent in 1985. By comparison, 
nuclear generation represented a smaller percentage — 15.5 per- 
cent — of power production in the United States in 1985. An 
estimated sixteen nuclear plants (forty-five reactors total) were oper- 
ating in 1988. 

The Soviet Union has led the world in magnetohydrodynamic 
power generation. This highly efficient method direcdy converts 
the energy of conventional steam expansion into power, using super- 
conductor magnetic fields. The first magnetohydrodynamic plant 
in the world was built at Ryazan' in the mid-1980s. 



511 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Obstacles to Power Supply 

In the late 1980s, the Soviet power industry was far behind its 
planned expansion rate. Technology was not available for on-site 
burning of low-quality coal, nor for transmitting the power it would 
generate across the huge distances required. Moreover, the 1986 
nuclear accident at Chernobyl' cast doubts on the reliability of the 
nuclear reactor models chosen to supply power to industrial centers 
in the European part of the Soviet Union. As in the case of fuels, 
planners faced long-term, irreversible choices among power sources. 

Soviet nuclear and thermoelectric generation has relied heavily 
on unproven equipment and long-distance delivery systems, whose 
failure could slow operations in major industries. For example, the 
Chernobyl' incident resulted in major disruption of the industrial 
power supply. Although switching techniques could sometimes 
avoid long-term slowdowns, no permanent alternative power source 
existed if nuclear power failed in the European part of the Soviet 
Union. Meanwhile, in the late 1980s construction of new nuclear 
plants fell far behind schedule, and a 30 percent shortfall was ex- 
pected in 1990 generation. Because hydroelectric stations fell be- 
hind in the same period, an added burden fell on thermoelectric 
facilities. Environmental concerns also caused local opposition to 
new nuclear and hydroelectric plants during this period. 

Heat and Cogeneration 

Although electrical energy is vital to Soviet industry, it is only 
about one-sixth the total energy generated in the country. Heat, 
which is also indispensable to industry, cannot be transported over 
long distances. Most heat came from central heat and power sta- 
tions in urban and industrial centers, which burned coal, heavy 
oil, or natural gas to generate heat as well as electricity. In the 1980s, 
a major program developed large-scale generators to produce heat 
as a by-product in existing thermal and nuclear power plants. Steam 
from the latter can be sent as far as forty kilometers. This process, 
called cogeneration, centralizes the fragmented heat-generation sys- 
tem. In 1985 urban cogeneration plants provided 28 percent of total 
Soviet power. 

The Consumer Industry 

Soviet industry is usually divided into two major categories. 
Group A is "heavy industry," which includes all those branches 
already discussed. Group B is "consumer goods," including foods, 
clothing and shoes, housing, and such heavy-industry products as 
appliances and fuels that are used by individual consumers. From 



512 



Construction in southwest Moscow, location of the city 's 
newest research and education institutes 
Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 

the early days of the Stalin era, Group A received top priority in 
economic planning and allocation. Only in 1987 was the founda- 
tion laid for a separate industrial complex for consumer industry, 
named the "social complex." Initially, it lacked the extensive 
bureaucratic structure of the other six complexes, and it contained 
only the Ministry of Light Industry. 

Consumer Supply in the 1980s 

In 1986 shortages continued in basic consumer items, even in 
major population centers. Such goods occasionally were rationed 
in major cities well into the 1980s. Besides the built-in shortages 
caused by planning priorities, shoddy production of consumer goods 
limited actual supply. According to Soviet economists, only 10 per- 
cent of Soviet finished goods could compete with their Western 
equivalents, and the average consumer faced long waiting periods 
to buy major appliances or furniture. During the 1980s, the wide 
availability of consumer electronics products in the West demon- 
strated a new phase of the Soviet Union's inability to compete, es- 
pecially because Soviet consumers were becoming more aware of 
what they were missing. In the mid-1980s, up to 70 percent of the 
televisions manufactured by Ekran, a major household electronics 



513 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

manufacturer, were rejected by quality control inspection. The tel- 
evision industry received special attention, and a strong drive for 
quality control was a response to published figures of very high 
rates of breakdown and repair. To improve the industry, a major 
cooperative color television venture was planned for the Warsaw 
Television Plant in 1989. 

The Logic and Goals of Consumer Production 

Increased availability of consumer goods was an important part 
of perestroika. A premise of that program was that workers would 
raise their productivity in response to incentive wages only if their 
money could buy a greater variety of consumer products. This idea 
arose when the early use of incentive wages did not have the antici- 
pated effect on labor productivity because purchasing power had 
not improved. According to the theory, all Soviet industry would 
benefit from diversification from Group A into Group B because 
incentives would have real meaning. Therefore, the Twelfth Five- 
Year Plan called for a 5.4 percent rise in nonfood consumer goods 
and a 5.4 to 7 percent rise in consumer services. Both figures were 
well above rates in the overall economic plan. 

Consumer goods targeted included radios, televisions, sewing 
machines, washing machines, refrigerators, printed matter, and 
knitwear. The highest quotas were set for the first three categories. 
Although in 1987 refrigerators, washing machines, televisions, tape 
recorders, and furniture were the consumer categories making the 
greatest production gains compared with the previous year, only 
furniture met its yearly quota. Furthermore, industrial planners 
have tried to use light industries to raise the industrial contribu- 
tions of such economic regions as the Transcaucasus and Central 
Asia, which have large populations but lack the raw materials for 
heavy manufacturing. 

Textiles and Wood Pulp 

The textile and wood pulp industries are traditional branches 
of light industry that remain essential to the Soviet economy. The 
major textile center is northeast of Moscow. Because the industry 
receives most of its raw material from the cotton fields of the Trans- 
caucasus and Central Asia economic regions, transport is expen- 
sive. Although large-scale cotton cultivation began in the Soviet 
Union only in the early 1900s, textile plant locations were estab- 
lished in the nineteenth century, when the country still imported 
most of its raw cotton. Soviet planners have tried to shift the tex- 
tile industry into the Transcaucasus and Central Asia economic 
regions, nearer the domestic cotton fields. But textiles have been 



514 



Industry 



a well-established economic base for the Moscow area, and in the 
1980s the bulk of the industry remained there. The Soviet wood 
pulp and paper industry is based on a vast supply of softwood trees. 
This industry is less centralized and closer to its raw material base 
than Soviet textiles; plants tend to be along the southern edge of 
forested regions, as close as possible to markets to the south and 
west (see Forestry, ch. 13). 

After the industrial stagnation in the 1970s and early 1980s, plan- 
ners expected that consumer industries would assume a more promi- 
nent role in Soviet production beginning with the Twelfth Five- Year 
Plan. But despite a greater emphasis on light industry and efforts 
to restructure the entire planning and production systems, very 
little upturn was visible in any sector of industry in 1989. High 
production quotas, particularly for some heavy industries, appeared 
increasingly unrealistic by the end of that plan. Although most 
Soviet officials agreed that perestroika was necessary and overdue, 
reforming the intricate industrial system had proved difficult. 

* * * 

The USSR Energy Atlas, prepared by the United States Central 
Intelligence Agency, is a detailed picture of Soviet fuels and power 
generation in the mid-1980s, with forecasts of future developments. 
It includes extensive maps, tables, and a gazetteer. Konstantin Spid- 
chenko's USSR: Geography of the Eleventh Five- Year Plan Period pro- 
vides an overview in English (from a Soviet perspective, which must 
be taken into consideration but does not mitigate its value) of the 
geographical distribution of industry and the rationale of expan- 
sion and location. It also describes major industrial areas and their 
resource bases. Gorbachev's Challenge by Marshall I. Goldman pro- 
vides a general background for the restructuring goals of Soviet 
industry in the late 1980s, with emphasis on technology transfer 
and the domestic research and development area. William F. Scott's 
article, "Moscow's Military-Industrial Complex," is a compre- 
hensive look at the system of military planning and its relation to 
the overall industrial system. Siberia and the Soviet Far East, edited 
by Rodger Swearingen, is a collection of articles describing in de- 
tail the economic and political factors in planning development of 
fuel and energy east of the Urals, with emphasis on oil and natural 
gas. J. P. Cole's Geography of the Soviet Union contains two chapters 
describing the geographical influence on Soviet industrial policy, 
including all major branches. Vadim Medish's The Soviet Union 
offers chapters on the scientific research establishment and economic 
planning, valuable background information in understanding Soviet 



515 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



industrial policy. Also, the collection of study papers for the Joint 
Economic Committee of the United States Congress, entitled 
Gorbachev 's Economic Plans, covers Soviet economic planning and 
performance, industrial modernization, the role of the defense in- 
dustry in the economy, and Soviet energy supply, with short arti- 
cles on specific subtopics. (For further information and complete 
citations, see Bibliography.) 



516 



Images of agriculture 



Agriculture continued to frustrate the lead- 
ers of the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Despite immense land 
resources, extensive machinery and chemical support industries, 
a large rural work force, and two decades of massive investment 
in the agricultural sector, the Soviet Union continued to rely on 
large-scale grain and meat imports to feed its population. Persis- 
tent shortages of staples, the general unavailability of fresh meats, 
fruits, and vegetables in state stores, and a bland, carbohydrate- 
rich diet remained a fact of life for Soviet citizens and a perennial 
embarrassment to their government. 

Although in terms of total value of output the Soviet Union was 
the world's second leading agricultural power and ranked first in 
the production of numerous commodities, agriculture was a net 
drain on the economy. The financial resources directed to this sector 
soared throughout the 1970s and by the mid-1980s accounted for 
nearly one- third of total investment. The ideologically motivated 
policy of maintaining low prices for staples created an enormous 
disparity between production costs and retail food prices. By 1983 
the per capita food subsidy amounted to nearly 200 rubles, which 
the consumer had to pay in higher prices for nonfood products. 

Although gross agricultural production rose by more than 50 per- 
cent between the 1950s and 1980s, outstripping population growth 
by 25 percent, the consumer did not see a proportionate improve- 
ment in the availability of foodstuffs (see table 34, Appendix A). 
This paradox indicated that the Soviet Union's inability to meet 
demand for agricultural commodities was only partly the result of 
production shortfalls and that much of the blame was attributable 
to other factors. Chief among these were the processing, transpor- 
tation, storage, and marketing elements of the food economy, the 
neglect of which over the years resulted in an average wastage of 
about one-fourth of agricultural output. Soviet experts estimated 
that if waste in storage and processing were eliminated, up to 25 
percent more grain, 40 percent more fruits and vegetables, and 
15 percent more meat and dairy products could be brought to 
market. 

The heavily centralized and bureaucratized system of adminis- 
tration, which has characterized Soviet agriculture ever since 
Joseph V. Stalin's campaign of forced collectivization (see Glos- 
sary), was the dominant cause of the sector's overall poor perfor- 
mance. Inflexible production directives from central planning 



519 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

organs that failed to take local growing conditions into account and 
bureaucratic interference in the day-to-day management of in- 
dividual farms fostered resentment and undermined morale in the 
countryside. The result was low labor productivity, the system's 
most intractable problem. Despite its systemic flaws, however, 
Soviet agriculture enjoyed certain successes. The standard of liv- 
ing of farm workers improved, illiteracy was reduced, incomes grew, 
better housing and health care were provided, and electricity was 
brought to virtually all villages. Farming practices were modern- 
ized, and agriculture received more machinery and became less 
labor intensive (see table 35, Appendix A). Ambitious irrigation 
and drainage projects brought millions of additional hectares under 
cultivation. Large livestock inventories were built up, particularly 
during the 1970s and 1980s. And the increased prominence accorded 
agriculture, coupled with wiser policies exploiting the profit motive, 
appeared to be paying dividends, as bumper grain harvests were 
reported in Mikhail S. Gorbachev's first two years in power. 

Policy and Administration 

Stalin's Legacy 

In the 1980s, the basic structure and operation of Soviet agricul- 
ture retained many of the features of the system that became en- 
trenched during Stalin's regime. Under Stalin agriculture was 
socialized, and a massive bureaucracy was created to administer 
policy. This bureaucracy was highly resistant to subsequent reform 
efforts. 

Stalin's campaign of forced collectivization, begun in the autumn 
of 1929, confiscated the land, machinery, livestock, and grain stores 
of the peasantry. By 1937 approximately 99 percent of the coun- 
tryside had been collectivized. Precise figures are lacking, but prob- 
ably 1 million kulak (see Glossary) households with nearly 5 million 
members were deported and were never heard from again. About 
7 million starved to death as the government confiscated grain 
stores. In defiance, peasants slaughtered their livestock rather than 
surrender it to the collectives. As a result, within five years the num- 
ber of horses, cattle, and hogs in the country was halved, and the 
number of sheep and goats was reduced by two-thirds. 

Aside from the immediate devastation wrought by forced col- 
lectivization, the experience left an enduring legacy of mutual dis- 
trust and hostility between the rural population and the Soviet 
authorities. The bureaucracy that evolved to administer agricul- 
ture was motivated more by political than by economic considera- 
tions. Its objectives were to industrialize agriculture, create a rural 



520 



Agriculture 



proletariat, and destroy peasant resistance to communist rule. Once 
entrenched, the bureaucracy relished its power, dictating policy 
from the top down with little regard for the opinions of individual 
farmers and even farm managers, who better understood local con- 
ditions. Such policies resulted in abysmally low labor productivity 
and massive waste of resources. This situation persisted into the 
1980s, when the Soviet farmer was on average about one-tenth as 
productive as his American counterpart. 

During Stalin's regime, virtually all farmland was assigned to 
the two basic agricultural production entities that still predominated 
in the 1980s — state farms and collective farms. The state farm (sovet- 
skoe khoziaistvo — sovkhoz) was conceived in 1918 as the ideal model 
for socialist agriculture. It was to be a large, modern enterprise, 
directed and financed by the government, with a work force receiv- 
ing wages and social benefits comparable to those enjoyed by 
industrial workers. By contrast, the collective farm {kollektivnoe 
khoziaistvo — kolkhoz) was a self- financed producer cooperative, 
which farmed land granted to it rent free by the state and which 
paid its members according to their contribution of work. Although 
in theory the kolkhoz was self-directed, electing its own managing 
committee and chairman, in reality it remained under the firm con- 
trol of state planning and procurement agencies. Chairmen who 
did not meet ideological purity requirements were removed. Sov- 
khozy operated much like any other production enterprise (see Glos- 
sary) in the Soviet command economy, with production targets and 
operating budgets determined by distant planning organs. The en- 
tire output of sovkhozy was delivered to state procurement agen- 
cies. Kolkhozy also received procurement quotas, but they were 
free to sell excess production in collective farm markets, where prices 
were determined by supply and demand. Because kolkhozy were 
self- financed, they received somewhat higher prices for their 
products. Nevertheless, the income of the kolkhoz resident was 
usually lower than that of the sovkhoz resident. In general, labor 
productivity on the sovkhoz was higher, probably because of its 
access to better machinery, chemicals, and seed and because it could 
specialize in the crops best suited to its region. The kolkhoz was 
constrained to produce a variety of crops and livestock, which 
decreased efficiency. 

Several watershed decisions by Stalin's successors reduced the 
differences between the two types of farms. Among these decisions 
were the 1958 elimination of state-operated machine tractor sta- 
tions, which had given the party leverage over the kolkhoz by con- 
trolling its access to heavy farm machinery; the establishment in 
1965 of a minimum wage, pension, and other benefits for kolkhoz 



521 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

workers; and the 1967 decision to make the sovkhoz a self-financed 
entity, which in theory the kolkhoz had been from the start. Not 
only was there a trend toward convergence of the features of the 
two types of farms, but there was also a pattern of official conver- 
sion of smaller, less solvent kolkhozy to sovkhozy. As a result, in 
1973 the total sown area of sovkhozy surpassed that of kolkhozy 
for the first time. The total number of kolkhozy decreased from 
235,500 in 1940 to 26,300 in 1986. But after the March 1989 
Agricultural Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist 
Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), it appeared likely that the 
proliferation of sovkhozy would cease. Even one of the most con- 
servative Politburo members, Egor K. Ligachev, who was named 
chairman of the party's Agrarian Policy Commission in Septem- 
ber 1988, recommended gradually converting sovkhozy into cooper- 
atives and leasing collectives. 

A third production entity that survived from Stalin's era was 
the private plot, known in Soviet jargon as the "personal auxiliary 
holding." These plots were ideologically unpalatable to the 
bureaucrats, but they were tolerated as a means for farmers to 
produce their own food and supplement their incomes. The plots 
were small (roughly half a hectare) and were assigned one to a 
household. Peasants were allowed to consume whatever was grown 
on the plot and sell any surplus — either at the collective farm mar- 
kets or to state or cooperative marketing agencies. The contribu- 
tion of private plots to the nation's food supply far exceeded their 
size. With only 3 percent of total sown area in the 1980s, they 
produced over a quarter of gross agricultural output, including 
about 30 percent of meat and milk, 66 percent of potatoes, and 
40 percent of fruits, vegetables, and eggs. 

Evolution of an Integrated Food Policy 

After the death of Stalin, an integrated food policy gradually 
evolved. Nikita S. Khrushchev was the first Soviet leader to demon- 
strate serious concern for the diet of the citizenry. In fact, it was 
his obsession with increasing the consumption of meat and dairy 
products that drove Khrushchev's controversial agricultural pro- 
gram. He switched the country's prime wheat-growing lands to 
the production of corn, which was supposed to feed an ever- 
increasing number of livestock. Khrushchev believed that the lost 
wheat production could be offset by extensive farming in the semi- 
arid virgin land of the Kazakh Republic and southwestern Siberia. 
However, his program, underfinanced from the start, did not 
produce the desired results, a major factor in his fall from power 
in 1964. 



522 



Agricultural tractor on road between Tallin, Estonian 
Republic, and the Latvian border 
Courtesy Jonathan Tetzlajf 
Cornfield on a state farm south of Moscow 
Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 



523 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Like his predecessor, Leonid I. Brezhnev considered agriculture 
a top priority. Unlike Khrushchev, however, he backed his pro- 
gram with massive investments. During his tenure, the supply of 
livestock housing increased 300 percent, and similar increases in 
the delivery of chemical fertilizers and tractors were recorded. 
Brezhnev's Food Program, announced in 1982, was intended to 
guide agriculture throughout the 1980s. It provided for even larg- 
er investment in the agro-industrial complex (agro-promyshlennyi 
kompleks — APK), particularly in its infrastructure (see The Com- 
plexes and the Ministries, ch. 12). The program also set up regional 
agro-industrial associations (regional* nye agro-promyshlennye ob"edi- 
neniia — RAPOs) to administer all elements of the food industry on 
the raion (see Glossary), oblast (see Glossary), krai (see Glossary), 
and autonomous republic (see Glossary) levels. The program's over- 
riding objective was improving the availability of food for the con- 
sumer. Production goals now referred to per capita consumption 
of meat, fruit, vegetables, and other basic foods. Unlike previous 
campaigns, the Food Program gave the same prominence to reduc- 
ing waste as to increasing output. 

In 1988 Gorbachev, who had been the Central Committee secre- 
tary for agriculture when the Food Program was announced, ap- 
peared to be pursuing a two-pronged approach to agricultural 
administration. On the one hand, he attempted to improve the 
APK's efficiency through further centralization, having merged 
five ministries and a state committee in late 1985 into the State 
Agro-Industrial Committee (Gosudarstvennyi agro-promyshlennyi 
komitet — Gosagroprom). Eliminated were the Ministry of Agricul- 
ture, the Ministry of the Fruit and Vegetable Industry, the Minis- 
try of the Meat and Dairy Industry, the Ministry of the Food 
Industry, the Ministry of Agricultural Construction, and the State 
Committee for the Supply of Production Equipment for Agricul- 
ture. But, on the other hand, he called for delegation of greater 
decision-making authority to the farms and farmers themselves. 

Gosagroprom proved to be a major disappointment to Gor- 
bachev, and at the March 1989 Agricultural Plenum of the Central 
Committee, the superministerial body was eliminated. Moreover, 
Gorbachev complained that the RAPOs meddled excessively in the 
operations of individual farms, and he urged abolishing them as 
well. The general thrust of the reforms proposed at the plenum 
was to dismantle the rigid central bureaucracy, transfer authority 
to local governing councils, and increase the participation of farmers 
in decision making. Gorbachev also elected to give the individual 
republics greater freedom in setting food production goals that were 
consistent with the needs of their people. 



524 



Agriculture 



A key objective of Gorbachev's perestroika (see Glossary) was to 
increase labor productivity by means of the proliferation of con- 
tract brigades throughout the economy. Agricultural contract 
brigades consisted of ten to thirty farm workers who managed a 
piece of land leased by the kolkhoz or sovkhoz under the terms of 
a contract making the brigades responsible for the entire produc- 
tion cycle. Because brigade members received a predetermined price 
for the contracted amount of output plus generous bonuses for any 
excess production, their income was tied to the result of their labors. 
After 1987 family contract brigades also became legal, and long- 
term leasing (up to fifteen years) was enacted — two reforms that 
in the opinion of some Western analysts pointed toward an even- 
tual sanctioning of the family farm. Because contract brigades en- 
joyed relative autonomy, much of the administrative bureaucracy 
resisted them. Nevertheless, in 1984 an estimated 296,100 farm 
workers had already banded together in contract brigades, and the 
document Basic Directions for the Economic and Social Development of 
the USSR for 1986-1990 and for the Period to the Year 2000 (a report 
presented to and subsequently adopted by the Twenty- Seventh 
Party Congress) called for their wider use (see Reforming the Plan- 
ning System, ch. 11). The March 1989 Agricultural Plenum en- 
dorsed contract brigades and agricultural leasing, a major victory 
for Gorbachev's reform effort. 

Soon after assuming power in 1985, Gorbachev demonstrated 
his intention of reforming another enduring feature of Soviet food 
policy — the maintenance of artificially low retail prices for staples 
in the state stores. In 1986 he raised prices for certain categories 
of bread, the first such increase in over thirty years. But much re- 
mained to be done in this critical area. For example, milk and meat 
prices had not been adjusted since 1962. The bill for food subsi- 
dies in 1985 came to nearly 55 billion rubles (for value of the 
ruble — see Glossary); of this, 35 billion rubles was for meat and 
milk products alone. By June 1986, the absurdity of the food sub- 
sidy policy had become a matter of open discussion in upper eche- 
lons of the party, and higher prices were expected to take effect 
by the end of the Twelfth Five- Year Plan (1986-90). 

Land Use 

Although the Soviet Union has the world's largest soil resources, 
climatic and hydrological conditions make farming a high-risk ven- 
ture, even within the most favorable zone, the so-called fertile tri- 
angle. This tract has the general shape of an isosceles triangle, the 
base of which is a line between the Baltic and Black seas and the 
apex of which is some 5,000 kilometers to the east near Krasnoyarsk. 



525 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

To the north of this triangle, the climate is generally too cold, and 
to the south it is too dry for farming. Because of the Soviet Union's 
northern latitude (most of the country lies north of 50° north lati- 
tude; all of the United States except Alaska lies south of this lati- 
tude) and the limited moderating influence of adjacent bodies of 
water on the climate of much of the country, growing conditions 
can dramatically vary from year to year. As a consequence, crop 
yields fluctuate greatiy. Only about 27 percent of the Soviet Union 
is considered agricultural land, of which roughly 10 percent is arable 
(see fig. 17). About 15 percent of Soviet territory is too arid, 20 
percent too cold, 30 percent too rugged, and 8.5 percent too marshy 
to permit farming. And in areas where the growing season is long 
enough, rainfall is frequently inadequate; only 1.1 percent of the 
arable land receives the optimal precipitation of at least 700 mil- 
limeters per year (compared with 60 percent of arable land in the 
United States and 80 percent in Canada). 

North of the fertile triangle lie the treeless Arctic tundra, cover- 
ing 9.3 percent of the country's territory, and an immense conifer- 
ous forest, the taiga, which occupies 31 percent of the territory. 
The tundra is an inhospitable region of permafrost and swampy 
terrain, agriculturally suitable only for reindeer herding. In the 
taiga zone, the climate becomes increasingly continental from the 
northwestern reaches of the country eastward into Siberia. East 
of the Yenisey River, permafrost is pervasive, and throughout the 
taiga vast swampy tracts and infertile podzol preclude all agricul- 
tural activity except for reindeer herding and limited cultivation 
of hay, rye, oats, barley, flax, potatoes, and livestock along the 
southern frontier of the zone. Of far greater economic importance 
are the forestry and fur industries of the taiga. 

Along its southwestern periphery, the taiga merges with a mixed 
hardwood and conifer forest, which accounts for another 8.2 per- 
cent of the country's total area. This zone is shaped like a triangle 
with its base in the west formed by the Estonian, Latvian, Lithua- 
nian, Belorussian, and northwestern Ukrainian republics and its 
apex in the east at a point beyond the Kama River. With heavy 
application of fertilizers, the gray-brown soils of the region can be 
relatively productive. Much of the land is highly marshy and re- 
quires costly drainage measures. The mixed-forest zone supports 
meat and milk production and the widespread cultivation of hay, 
oats, rye, buckwheat, sugar beets, potatoes, and flax. Wheat is also 
grown in the area, but with only limited success because of the short- 
ness of the season. 

A transitional forest-steppe zone stretches in a belt 250 to 500 
kilometers wide from the western Ukrainian Republic to the Urals, 



526 



Agriculture 



occupying approximately 7.7 percent of Soviet territory. This area 
has the best agricultural land in the Soviet Union because of the 
richness of its chernozem (see Glossary) soil, the abundance of 
precipitation, and the temperateness of the climate. A wide vari- 
ety of grains, sugar beets, and livestock are raised here. The most 
serious problem confronting agriculture in the zone is severe water 
and wind erosion, which has resulted from the removal of much 
of the forest cover. 

Farther south are the vast open steppes, which extend from the 
Moldavian Republic in a northeasterly direction across the north- 
ern part of the Kazakh Republic as far as Krasnoyarsk, covering 
roughly 15 percent of the Soviet Union. It is a region of relatively 
low precipitation, where periodic droughts have calamitous effects 
on agriculture. Because the lighter soils of this region are nearly 
as fertile as the chernozem of the forest-steppe and because the grow- 
ing season is longer, when moisture is adequate, crop yields can 
be large. Irrigation is widely practiced throughout the steppe, par- 
ticularly in the middle and lower Volga River Valley and in the 
southern Ukrainian and Kazakh republics. The primary crop of 
the region is wheat, although barley is also widely sown. Corn is 
an important crop in the Donets-Dnepr region, and millet is sown 
along the Volga and on the Ural steppes. Sugar beets, sunflowers, 
fruits, and vegetables are also cultivated on a large scale. 

Immediately south of the steppes is a zone of semidesert and 
desert that includes the northeastern edge of the Caucasus region, 
the Caspian Lowland and lower Volga River Valley, the central 
and southern Kazakh Republic, and all of Soviet Central Asia. Irri- 
gation projects of epic proportions make agriculture in this arid 
region possible. Among the most noteworthy of these projects in 
the 1980s were the Karakum Canal (see Glossary), over 1,100 
kilometers of which had been completed by 1988, designed to pro- 
vide irrigation water for 1.5 million hectares in the Turkmen 
Republic; the Fergana Valley in the Uzbek Republic, with over 
1 million hectares under irrigation; the Golodnaya Steppe, west 
of the Fergana Valley, where over 500,000 hectares were irrigated; 
and numerous other projects exploiting the limited water resources 
of the Vakhsh, Amu Darya, Chu, Syr Darya, Zeravshan, Kashka 
Darya, and other Central Asian rivers. The region specialized in 
such crops as cotton, alfalfa, and fruits and vegetables; the raising 
of sheep, goats, and cattle was widespread. 

In the Caucasus region, two small subtropical areas along the 
Black and Caspian seas specialize in exotic crops such as citrus fruit, 
tea, and tobacco, as well as grapes, other fruits, early vegetables, 
and cotton. The mountains provide pasturage for sheep and goats. 



527 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 




528 



Agriculture 



Agriculture is a productive enterprise on the southern rim of 
eastern Siberia and the Soviet Far East, primarily in the Amur, 
Bureya, and Zeya river valleys; Olekminskly Raion in the central 
Yakut Autonomous Republic; and Primorskiy Krai on the Sea of 
Japan. The area is well suited for livestock, especially beef and dairy 
cattle, wheat, rice, sugar beets, and other crops. 

Throughout the Soviet era, massive projects have been under- 
taken to expand the area of arable land. Drainage efforts have been 
concentrated in the northwest, i.e., the Belorussian, Estonian, Lat- 
vian, Lithuanian, and northwestern Russian republics. The great 
expense of drainage is justified by the proximity of these areas to 
major urban centers, where demand for farm products is highest. 
Between 1956 and 1986, the area of the nation's drained farmland 
more than doubled from 8.4 million to 19.5 million hectares. The 
area under irrigation increased from 10.1 million hectares in 1950 
to 20.4 million hectares in 1986. Of this total, Soviet Central Asia 
accounted for 8.5 million, the Russian Republic for 6.1 million, 
and the Ukrainian Republic for 2.4 million hectares. In 1984 
Gorbachev claimed that irrigated land yielded all the country's cot- 
ton and rice, three-quarters of its vegetables, half of its fruit and 
wine grapes, and a quarter of its feed crops. In 1986 drained or 
irrigated farmland accounted for almost a third of total national 
crop production. Irrigation has had a decidedly mixed record. On 
the one hand, it has transformed semiarid and arid regions into 
farmland, making the Soviet Union one of the world's chief pro- 
ducers of cotton, for example. On the other hand, excessive water 
withdrawal from the rivers Amu Darya and Syr Darya has practi- 
cally destroyed one of the world's largest lakes, the Aral Sea, by 
depriving it of its major sources of water (see Environmental Con- 
cerns, ch. 3; Satellite imagery of the Aral Sea in 1987, p. 117). 

Production 

Agricultural self-sufficiency has been the goal of Soviet leader- 
ship since the Bolshevik Revolution (see Glossary), but it was not 
until the late 1940s that food supplies were adequate to prevent 
widespread hunger. Farm output had suffered greatiy as a result 
of Stalin's policies of forced collectivization, low procurement prices, 
and underinvestment in agriculture; at the time of his death in 1953, 
both the quality and the quantity of the food supply were inferior 
to that of the precollectivization period. 

Under Khrushchev and Brezhnev, improved agricultural per- 
formance became a top priority, and sown area for major crops 
increased (see table 36, Appendix A). By 1983 the APK accounted 
for more than 40 percent of the total value of the country's fixed 



529 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

capital assets, created 42 percent of total national income, and 
provided 75 percent of total retail turnover in state and coopera- 
tive trade. In spite of the massive investments of the 1970s and 
1980s, however, the sector generally did not perform well. Whereas 
the annual growth rate of agricultural output averaged 3.9 per- 
cent between 1950 and 1970, it actually declined to 1.2 percent 
in the decade of the 1970s. And between 1981 and 1985, grain out- 
put averaged only 180.3 million tons, substantially below the 
1976-80 average of 205 million tons and not even matching the 
1971-75 average of 181.6 million tons. 

In 1986 this downward trend was reversed, as the fourth best 
grain harvest in Soviet history was recorded — 210.1 million tons. 
In spite of severe winter weather and a late spring, the 1987 har- 
vest was even larger, 211.3 million tons, marking the first time 
in Soviet history that output exceeded 200 million tons for two con- 
secutive years. Gorbachev's policies of increased reliance on 
contract-brigade farming and delegation of broader decision-making 
authority to local managers were given partial credit for this im- 
provement in agricultural performance. 

Another important contributing factor to the improved agricul- 
tural performance of 1986 and 1987, according to Western analysts, 
was the cumulative effect of nearly two decades of heavy invest- 
ment in the agricultural infrastructure. Notable progress had been 
made in livestock housing, machinery manufacturing, and fertilizer 
production. Nevertheless, much remained to be done. As many 
as 40 percent of the nation's farms still lacked storage facilities, 
and the average farm was hundreds of kilometers from the nearest 
grain elevator or meat-packing plant. Much of the rural road net- 
work was not hard surfaced and during the rainy seasons became 
impassable. Although the Soviet Union had become the world's 
largest tractor manufacturer, surpassing the United States by 4.5 
times in the 1980s, the quality of this machinery was low and spare 
parts were virtually nonexistent. Enormous progress had been made 
in the development of the agricultural chemical industry, and deliv- 
eries increased substantially (see table 37, Appendix A). The ex- 
pansion of transportation, storage, and packaging capacity did not 
keep pace with it. Over 10 percent of the chemical fertilizer 
produced never reached the farms. 

Grain 

Grain crops have long been the foundation of agriculture in the 
Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. In 1986 grain was grown 
on 55.3 percent of the total sown area of 210.3 million hectares. 
The most widely cultivated grain crops continued to be wheat (48.7 



530 



Bessarabian Market, Kiev, Ukrainian Republic 
Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 

million hectares, or 23.2 percent of the total sown area), followed 
in order by barley (30.0 million hectares), oats (13.2 million hect- 
ares), rye (8.7 million hectares), pulses (6.7 million hectares), corn 
for grain (4.2 million hectares), millet (2.5 million hectares), buck- 
wheat (1.6 million hectares), and rice (600,000 hectares). The area 
sown with wheat declined steadily throughout the 1970s and 1980s, 
reaching a thirty-year low in 1987. And the total area occupied 
by grain fell during each year from 1981 through 1986, as more 
land was laid fallow or planted in fodder crops. 

Although the total area allotted to grain in 1986 (116.5 million 
hectares) was only slightly greater than that allotted in 1960 (115.8 
million hectares), total output throughout the period steadily rose, 
thanks to the use of more productive farming methods, improved 
seed, and heavier application of fertilizers. For example, average 
wheat yields rose from 1.34 tons per hectare between 1966 and 1970 
to 1.6 tons per hectare between 1976 and 1980 (a figure slightly 
skewed by the record harvest of 1978), 1 .45 tons per hectare from 
1981 to 1985, and 1 .89 tons per hectare in 1986. At the same time, 
rye, barley, oats, and corn yields were also gradually rising. 

The Soviet Union has never had an oversupply of feed grains, 
and before Brezhnev's era it was customary to conduct wholesale 
slaughter of livestock during bad harvest years to conserve grain 



531 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

for human consumption. Beginning in the early 1970s, however, 
the standard policy was to import the grain needed to sustain large 
livestock inventories. Thereafter, the Soviet Union appeared des- 
tined to be a permanent net importer of grains. During the Eleventh 
Five- Year Plan (1981-85), the country imported some 42 million 
tons of grain annually, almost twice as much as during the Tenth 
Five-Year Plan (1976-80) and three times as much as during the 
Ninth Five-Year Plan (1971-75). The bulk of this grain was pro- 
vided by the West; in 1985, for example, 94 percent of Soviet grain 
imports were from the noncommunist world, with the United States 
supplying 14.1 million tons. 

Technical Crops 

So-called technical crops are widely and successfully cultivated 
in the Soviet Union. Among such crops are cotton, sugar beets, 
sunflowers and other crops producing oilseeds, flax, and hemp. 
In 1986 these crops were grown on 13.7 million hectares, about 
6.5 percent of the total sown area. In the 1970s, the Soviet Union 
assumed the position of the world's largest producer of cotton, aver- 
aging more than 8 million tons of raw cotton per year. Virtually 
all of the country's cotton was grown on irrigated lands in Central 
Asia and the Azerbaydzhan Republic; the Uzbek Republic alone 
accounted for 62 percent of total output between 1981 and 1985. 

The Soviet Union has been very successful at cultivating sun- 
flowers, accounting for over half of world output. The crop flour- 
ishes in the low-precipitation southern zones, especially in the 
Donets-Dnepr and northern Caucasus regions. The area allotted 
to sunflower cultivation steadily decreased from a peak level of 4.8 
million hectares in 1970 to 3.9 million hectares in 1987. Total output 
also dropped, but thanks to improved seed stock and more effec- 
tive use of intensive technology, the decrease in production was 
not proportionate to the reduced area for cultivation. The average 
annual harvest between 1971 and 1975 was slightly below 6 mil- 
lion tons, and in 1987 it amounted to 6.1 million tons. 

Since the early 1970s, sugar beets have occupied roughly the same 
amount of farmland as the other major technical crops — cotton and 
sunflowers — averaging some 3.5 million hectares. Sugar beet 
production, concentrated in the central and western Ukrainian 
Republic, the northwestern Caucasus, and the eastern areas of the 
Kazakh Republic and other Soviet Central Asian republics aver- 
aged 88.7 million tons per year between 1976 and 1980, well above 
the previous high of an average of 81.1 million tons per year in 
the 1966-70 period. Between 1981 and 1985, output fell to 76.3 
million tons annually but rose thereafter, reaching 90 million tons 



532 



Agriculture 



in 1987. Although in the 1980s sugar beets continued to provide 
over 60 percent of the country's sugar production, the Soviet Union 
was becoming increasingly dependent on raw sugar imported 
primarily from Cuba, e.g. , from 2.1 million tons per year between 
1966 and 1970 to 4.9 million tons per year between 1981 and 1985. 

Grown for fiber and as a source of linseed oil, flax has been par- 
ticularly successful in the mixed-forest zone northwest of Moscow 
and in the Belorussian, Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, and north- 
west Ukrainian republics. Although the area sown to flax steadily 
decreased from 2.1 million hectares in 1940 to only 980,000 hect- 
ares in 1986, production actually rose from 349,000 tons of fiber 
in 1940 to a peak of 480,000 tons in 1965 and to 366,000 tons in 
1986. 

Hemp, the other significant fiber crop, has been grown since 
the eighteenth century, although its area of cultivation has stead- 
ily decreased from about 600,000 hectares in 1940 to fewer than 
100,000 hectares in 1986. Used in making rope, string, and rough 
cloth, hemp is grown primarily in the central chernozem area south 
of Tula and in the northern Caucasus. 

Forage Crops 

Since Khrushchev's campaign to raise the consumption of meat 
products, the Soviet Union has been expanding the cultivation of 
forage crops to feed a larger number of livestock. This trend was 
reinforced under Brezhnev's tenure, particularly after the announce- 
ment of the Food Program in 1982. Thus the area occupied by 
forage crops grew dramatically from 18.1 million hectares in 1940 
to 63.1 million hectares in 1960; it remained virtually unchanged 
throughout the 1960s and then steadily rose to reach a high of 71 .4 
million hectares in 1986, when it accounted for approximately one- 
third of the total sown area. The area occupied by perennial hay 
crops (alfalfa and clover) nearly doubled between 1960 and 1986, 
while annual grasses and corn for silage were cultivated on a gradu- 
ally diminishing scale. Total non grain feed production, including 
corn for silage, feed roots, and hay and green fodder, increased 
steadily from 427.4 million tons in 1960 to 554.6 million tons in 
1986. 

Potatoes and Vegetables 

A staple of the Russian diet for centuries and an important animal 
feed source, potatoes are grown on private plots throughout the 
country. They are cultivated on a large scale in the Ukrainian, 
Belorussian, Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian republics and 
in the central European part of the Russian Republic. The area 



533 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

devoted to growing potatoes decreased steadily between 1960 (7.7 
million hectares) and 1986 (6.4 millon hectares), although pota- 
toes still accounted for nearly three-quarters of the total area devoted 
to vegetable crops. Potato harvests also declined substantially — 
from an average of 94.8 million tons annually between 1966 and 
1970 to fewer than 78.4 million tons per year in the 1980-85 period. 

Traditionally, the most widely grown vegetables in addition to 
potatoes have included beets, carrots, cabbages, cucumbers, toma- 
toes, and onions. These crops have been grown on an ever larger 
scale since the 1960s, and in 1986 they occupied nearly 1.7 mil- 
lion hectares. Yields increased proportionately, reaching a record 
29.7 million tons in 1986. Thanks to the proliferation of large 
clusters of hothouses, it was possible to supply fresh cucumbers and 
tomatoes, among other produce, to the residents of major urban 
centers throughout the year. With private plots yielding roughly 
40 percent of the vegetable harvest, much of the population, par- 
ticularly the kolkhoz residents, grew a portion of their own produce. 

Other Crops 

Fruit cultivation in the Soviet Union is most successful in the 
southern, more temperate zones. The tiny Moldavian Republic, 
with its fertile soil and ample sunshine, produces more fruit and 
berries than all but the Ukrainian and Russian republics. In 1986 
it harvested 1.2 million tons, as compared with 3.3 million tons 
in the Ukrainian Republic (which has 18 times more land area) 
and 2.9 million tons in the entire Russian Republic (which is 506 
times the size of the Moldavian Republic). Orchards and vineyards 
occupied their largest area between 1971 and 1975, with a yearly 
average of 4.9 million hectares. However, the area allotted to non- 
citrus fruits decreased steadily from 3.8 million hectares in 1970 
to 3.0 million hectares in 1986. Significant crops were table and 
wine grapes, which were widely grown in the warmer southern 
regions. The Azerbaydzhan and Moldavian republics accounted 
for over 40 percent of the total grape harvest, but the Ukrainian, 
Georgian, and Uzbek republics and the southern Russian Repub- 
lic were also major producers. Citrus fruit growing was limited to 
the Black Sea coast of the Georgian Republic and a small area of 
the southeastern Azerbaydzhan Republic. In 1986 the Georgian 
Republic produced 97 percent of the total national harvest of 
322,000 tons of citrus fruit. 

Tea, a traditional beverage of Russians and the peoples of the 
Caucasus and Central Asia, is another specialty crop of the Geor- 
gian Republic, which accounted for 93.4 percent of national pro- 
duction in 1986. Other important centers of tea growing are the 



534 




535 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Azerbaydzhan Republic and Krasnodarskiy Krai in the Russian 
Republic. The area reserved for tea cultivation grew significantly 
between 1940 and 1986, going from 55,300 to 81,400 hectares. 
Production rose steadily during the 1950s and thereafter, reach- 
ing a peak of 620,800 tons in 1985. Despite increased yields, 
however, larger tea imports were necessary to meet consumer de- 
mand and reached 108,000 tons (equal to 17.4 percent of domes- 
tic production) in 1985. 

Tobacco, like tea, is a fixture of Soviet life. The crop flourishes 
in the warmer southern regions, particularly in the Moldavian 
Republic, which produced about a third of the 1984 harvest. Other 
centers of tobacco cultivation are Central Asia and the Caucasus, 
which accounted for roughly 30 percent and 25 percent of the 1984 
harvest, respectively. In 1940 only 72,800 tons were grown, but 
by 1984 tobacco output had more than quadrupled, reaching 
375,700 tons. Production, however, did not keep pace with demand, 
and in 1984 about 103,000 tons (equal to more than 27 percent 
of domestic output) had to be imported. 

Animal Husbandry 

Because it is less restricted by climatic conditions, livestock raising 
is more widely distributed across the Soviet Union than is the cul- 
tivation of crops. For example, in the cooler, wetter northern regions 
of the European part of the country, where few cash crops can be 
grown, dairy farming is profitable because of the proximity to urban 
markets and the ready availability of fodder. In the 90 percent of 
the country considered nonarable, various forms of animal hus- 
bandry are practiced, such as reindeer herding in the Arctic and 
sheep, goat, and cattle grazing on the grasslands of Central Asia 
and Siberia. Nevertheless, it is the fertile triangle that has always 
accounted for the bulk of the nation's animal products. 

Animal husbandry has received special attention since the late 
1950s, and a primary goal of Soviet agriculture has been to increase 
the production and consumption of meat, milk, and eggs (see table 
38, Appendix A). This effort has resulted in significantly larger 
numbers of livestock. For example, the number of cattie more than 
doubled between 1955 and 1987, rising from 56.7 million to 121.9 
million head. During the same period, the number of hogs rose 
even more dramatically (from 3.9 million to 80 million head), and 
the number of sheep grew by half to reach 141.5 million head. The 
number of goats and horses in 1987 stood at 6.5 and 5.8 million 
head, slightly higher than in 1980 but well below the 1955 figures 
of 14.0 and 14.2 million head, respectively. Indeed, throughout 



536 



Herder with cows on a road south of Moscow 
Shepherd with his sheep, Azerbaydzhan Republic 
Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 



537 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

the Soviet period, the number of horses steadily declined as agricul- 
ture became more mechanized. 

Larger numbers of animals notwithstanding, food output per 
animal continued to lag far behind Western standards. For exam- 
ple, milk production per cow averaged roughly half that reported 
in Finland, where the climate is certainly no more favorable. And 
even though the Soviet Union had achieved a ratio of cattle-to- 
human population comparable to that of the United States, beef 
production per head in 1986 was 35 percent lower. Similarly, pork 
output per head fell some 30 percent below the figure for the United 
States. According to Western analysts, this low livestock produc- 
tivity resulted from inadequate feed supplies in general and a defi- 
ciency of protein in feed rations in particular. Domestic producers 
of protein supplement from cotton and sunflower seeds and pulses 
were unable to meet demand, which the government did not sat- 
isfy through imports. This decision took a heavy toll on livestock 
productivity. 

To streamline livestock raising, a new type of production entity 
emerged in the 1960s and became increasingly prominent — 
industrialized livestock enterprises outside the traditional kolkhoz 
and sovkhoz system. These specialized factory-like operations pur- 
chased their feed and other inputs from outside sources, to which 
they enjoyed priority access. In 1986 they accounted for about 20 
percent of pork, 5 percent of beef and milk, and over 60 percent 
of poultry and egg production. 

In the thirty-five years between 1950 and 1985, per capita meat 
and fat consumption increased some 135 percent, reaching sixty- 
one kilograms per year. During the same period, consumption of 
milk and dairy products climbed by nearly 88 percent, and egg 
consumption rose by an impressive 334 percent. Still, demand for 
these products far exceeded supply, and in the late 1980s their avail- 
ability in state stores remained very limited. 

Forestry 

With a third of the world's forested area, the Soviet Union has 
long led all countries in the production of logs and sawn timber. 
Although Siberia and the Soviet Far East hold 75 percent of the 
country's total reserves, they accounted for only about 35 percent 
of timber output in the mid-1980s. The forests of the northern 
European part of the Russian Republic have supplied timber 
products to the major population centers for centuries, and the tim- 
ber industry of the region is better organized and more efficient 
than that east of the Urals. In addition, the European pine and 
fir forests grow in denser stands and yield a generally superior 



538 



Agriculture 



product than the vast forests of the east, where the less desirable 
larch predominates. With the construction of some of the world's 
largest wood-processing centers in eastern Siberia and the Soviet 
Far East, and with the opening of the Baykal-Amur Main Line 
in 1989, the timber industry of the eastern regions was greatly ad- 
vanced (see The Baykal-Amur Main Line, ch. 14). 

The Soviet timber industry, which in 1986 employed roughly 
454,000 workers, has had a long history of low productivity and 
excessive waste. Because of inadequate processing capacity, out- 
put of wood pulp, newsprint, paper, cardboard, plywood, and other 
wood products was scandalously low, considering the size of the 
Soviet Union's timber resources and its perennial position as the 
world leader in roundwood and sawed timber production. By the 
mid-1980s, the country appeared to have made substantial progress 
in achieving greater balance in its wood products mix. In 1986, 
for example, the production of pulp (9 million tons) was nearly 
four times the 1960 output (2.3 million tons), paper production 
(6.2 million tons) was almost three times higher, and cardboard 
output (4.6 million tons) was roughly five times the 1960 level. 
Nevertheless, in 1986 the Soviet Union ranked only fourth in world 
paper and cardboard production, with only one- sixth the output 
of either the United States or Japan. A high percentage of the round- 
wood harvest was used in the form of unprocessed logs and fire- 
wood, which remained an important fuel in the countryside. 

In addition to their wood products, the north European, Siberian, 
and Far Eastern forests are important for their animal resources. 
Fur exports have long been an important source of hard currency 
(see Glossary). Although trapping continued to be widely practiced 
in the 1980s, fur farming, set up soon after the Bolshevik Revolu- 
tion, accounted for most of the country's production of mink, sable, 
fox, and other fine furs. 

One of the significant accomplishments of Soviet forestry has been 
the successful effort to restore and maintain production through 
reforestation of areas where overfelling had occurred. In 1986 alone, 
restoration work on 2.2 million hectares was completed, which in- 
cluded planting trees on 986,000 hectares. In the same year, nearly 
1.7 million hectares of trees that had been planted as seedlings 
reached commercial maturity. In addition, some 109,000 hectares 
of shelterbelts were planted along gullies, ravines, sand dunes, and 
pastureland. This policy of conservation, in place for several de- 
cades, helped fight wind erosion and preserved soil moisture. 

Fishing 

Fish has always been a prominent part of the Soviet diet. Until 
the mid-1950s, the bulk of the Soviet catch came from inland lakes, 



539 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

rivers, and coastal waters. Thereafter, the Soviet Union launched 
an ambitious program to develop the world's largest oceangoing 
fishing fleet, which consisted of 4,222 ships in 1986. The Soviet 
Union became the world's second leading fish producer, trailing 
Japan by a small margin throughout the 1970s and 1980s. In 1986 
Soviet production amounted to 11.4 million tons, most of which 
was caught in marine fisheries. 

The Atlantic Ocean supplied 49.2 percent of the total catch in 
1980, while the Pacific Ocean yielded 41.3 percent. The Caspian, 
Black, Azov, and Aral seas, suffering from lowered water levels, 
increased salinity, and pollution, became relatively less important 
fisheries in the 1970s and 1980s. Whereas Murmansk had been 
the one large fishing port before the expansion of the oceangoing 
fleet, by 1980 there were twenty-three such ports, the largest of 
which were Vladivostok, Nakhodka, Kaliningrad, Archangel, 
Klaipeda, Riga, Tallin, Sevastopol', and Kerch'. In 1982 more 
than 96 percent of the frozen fish, 45 percent of the canned fish, 
60 percent of the fish preserve, and 94 percent of the fish meal deliv- 
ered to market was processed at sea by large, modern factory ships. 

Because of the worldwide trend of claiming 200-mile territorial 
waters, total fish production fell after 1977. The open Pacific was 
viewed as a promising fishery to offset reduced production in coastal 
waters, which had been yielding up to 60 percent of the Soviet catch. 
Inland fisheries also began to receive more attention, and fish farm- 
ing was promoted as ponds were established close to urban centers. 
Between 1961 and 1980, the production of fresh fish by such en- 
terprises increased by over 8.8 times, reaching 158,300 tons. The 
Eleventh Five-Year Plan called for pond fish production to be 
tripled. 

The Twelfth Five-Year Plan, 1986-90 

Following the disappointing performance of Soviet agriculture 
during the Eleventh Five-Year Plan, the Twelfth Five-Year Plan 
got off to a promising start, with larger than expected grain har- 
vests and improved labor productivity. Nevertheless, Western 
analysts viewed as unrealistic most of the Twelfth Five-Year Plan 
production targets — both those set forth in the Food Program of 
1982 and those subsequently revised downward. 

According to the document Basic Directions for the Economic and 
Social Development of the USSR for 1986-1990 and for the Period to the 
Year 2000, the Soviet Union would significantly increase produc- 
tion of all agricultural commodities. The ambitious 1990 produc- 
tion target ranges laid out in this document called for increases over 
the average annual output of the Eleventh Five-Year Plan. The 



540 



Fishing boats in the port of Listvyanka, Lake Baykal, Russian Republic 

Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 

target ranges for agricultural commodities were as follows: grain 
from 38.7 to 41.4 percent; sugar beets from 20.6 to 24.5 percent; 
sunflower seeds from 48.9 to 50.9 percent; potatoes from 14.9 to 
17.4 percent; vegetables from 36.9 to 43.7 percent; fruits, berries, 
and grapes from 40.4 to 51 .6 percent; raw cotton from 9.5 to 13. 1 
percent; meat from 10.7 to 29.4 percent; milk from 12.1 to 16.3 
percent; and eggs from 7.5 to 10.2 percent. The 1990 goals for 
the fishing industry ranged from 4.4 to 4.6 million tons of fish food 
products and about 3 billion cans of fish preserve. The forestry 
industry was tasked with increasing the production of pulp by 1 5 
to 18 percent, of paper by 11 to 15 percent, and of fiberboard by 
17 to 20 percent. As in all sectors of the economy, conservation 
of raw materials and reduction of waste in transportation and 
storage of commodities were to be emphasized more than in any 
previous period. 

Although grain harvests were excellent in 1986 and 1987, out- 
put fell to only 195 million tons in 1988, forcing the Soviet Union 
to import more than 36 million tons that year. The 1988 harvest 
of potatoes, other vegetables, and fruits also declined as compared 
with the previous two years. As a result, the availability of food 
products throughout the country worsened, and in mid- 1989 many 
Western observers believed a severe shortage and possibly famine 



541 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

were impending. Clearly the Twelfth Five- Year Plan's goals for 
agriculture would not be attained, a severe setback for Gorbachev's 
perestroika efforts. 

* * * 

An invaluable source of statistical data on the agro-industrial 
complex is the 1987 publication Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR za 70 let, 
compiled by the Soviet Union's Gosudarstvennyi komitet po 
statistike. USSR Situation and Outlook Report, published annually by 
the United States Department of Agriculture's Economic Research 
Service, presents a concise overview of recent Soviet agricultural 
performance. D. Gale Johnson and Karen McConnell Brooks's 
Prospects for Soviet Agriculture in the 1980s examines Soviet agricul- 
tural efficiency in light of policy and natural and climatic factors. 
The Soviet Rural Economy, edited by Robert C. Stuart, presents several 
highly pertinent essays on Soviet agriculture, including Michael L. 
Wyzan's "The Kolkhoz and the Sovkhoz," Valentin Litvin's 
"Agro- Industrial Complexes," and Everett M. Jacobs' s "Soviet 
Agricultural Management and Planning and the 1982 Adminis- 
trative Reforms." Two other important anthologies are Agricul- 
tural Policies in the USSR and Eastern Europe, edited by Ronald A. 
Francisco, Betty A. Laird, and Roy D. Laird, and Soviet Agricul- 
tural and Peasant Affairs, edited by Roy D. Laird. Paul E. Lydolph's 
classic Geography of the USSR provides a comprehensive description 
of Soviet agricultural resources, including forestry and fishing. The 
evolution of current policy is traced by Karl-Eugen Waedekin in 
numerous Radio Liberty Research Bulletin reports, including "The 
Private Agricultural Sector in the 1980s," " 'Contract' and 'Norm- 
less' Labor on Soviet Farms," and "What Is New about Brigades 
in Soviet Agriculture?" Zhores A. Medvedev's Soviet Agriculture and 
Valentin Litvin's The Soviet Agro -Industrial Complex provide highly 
detailed descriptions of the organization and functioning of Soviet 
agriculture. (For further information and complete citations, see 
Bibliography.) 



542 



Elements of the Soviet Union 's transportation 
communications networks 



THE TRANSPORTATION AND COMMUNICATIONS sys- 
tems of the Soviet Union were owned and operated by the govern- 
ment primarily to serve the economic needs of the country as 
determined by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). 
In addition to being influenced by the policies of the regime, the 
development of transportation and communications also has been 
greatly influenced by the country's vast size, geography, climate, 
population distribution, and location of industries and natural 
resources. Although the population and industrial centers were con- 
centrated in the European part of the country, which has a more 
moderate climate, many of the mineral and energy resources were 
in sparsely inhabited, climatically inhospitable expanses of Siberia 
and other remote areas. Hence, the transportation and communi- 
cations networks were much denser in the European part than in 
the Asian part of the country. 

In 1989, and historically, railroads were the premier mode of 
transportation in the Soviet Union. Railroads played significant 
roles in times of war, and they accelerated industrial development. 
They also facilitated the normal flow of raw materials, manufac- 
tured goods, and passengers. Government policies provided for ex- 
tensive trackage and large numbers of locomotives, rolling stock, 
and support facilities. Although railroads carried more freight and 
passengers over long distances, trucks and buses carried more cargo 
and people on short hauls. Because automotive transport was not 
generally used for long hauls, many roads outside of urban areas 
had gravel or dirt surfaces. The lack of paved roads in rural areas 
seriously hampered the movement of agricultural products and sup- 
plies. Privately owned automobiles, on a per capita basis, were few 
in number compared with those in the West and therefore were 
of limited importance in transportation. 

Inland waterways, comprising navigable rivers, lakes, and canals, 
enabled a wide variety of ships, barges, and other craft to trans- 
port passengers and freight to their destinations inexpensively. Com- 
muters in urban areas often used hydrofoils on rivers for rapid 
transport, while freight moved on the waterways more slowly over 
much greater distances. Waterways were subject to freezing in 
winter, although a fleet of ice breakers extended the navigable sea- 
son. Most rivers in the Asian part of the country flow northward 
into the Arctic Ocean and thus were of little help in moving raw 
materials to the European part of the country. At some river ports 



545 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

in Siberia, raw materials were loaded onto ships for delivery to 
domestic and foreign ports via the Arctic to the Pacific or the 
Atlantic oceans. 

A large, modern, and well-diversified fleet of merchant and pas- 
senger vessels conveyed not only freight and passengers to the 
world's maritime nations but also Soviet political influence. Many 
cargo vessels, often highly specialized, were designed to off-load 
freight and vehicles in foreign countries not having modern port 
facilities. Although the world's largest fleet of passenger liners be- 
longed to the Soviet Union, the voyagers were mainly Western 
tourists. Extensive fishing and scientific research fleets, together 
with several international ferry systems, added to the already sub- 
stantial worldwide maritime presence of the Soviet Union. 

The civilian air fleet was primarily a fast transporter of people 
but was often the only mode of transport available to some areas 
in the Far North, Siberia, and the Soviet Far East. Using the inter- 
national airports of Moscow and other major cities, Soviet airplanes 
flew to almost every country of the world. The air fleet also had 
many specialized aircraft performing various missions not associated 
with airlines in the West, such as agricultural spraying, medical 
evacuations, and energy exploration. 

As a means of efficiently conveying oil, natural gas, and some 
other materials, pipelines played a significant part in the transpor- 
tation system. Major pipelines stretched from northern and Siberian 
oil and gas fields to refineries and industrial users in the European 
part of the country. Pipelines supplied energy to Eastern Europe, 
which was heavily dependent on Soviet gas and oil, and to Western 
Europe, which exchanged hard currency (see Glossary) for Soviet 
natural gas. 

Using a communications system that incorporated advanced 
satellite technologies, the government transmitted its radio and tele- 
vision programming throughout most of the Soviet Union. Tele- 
phones were mainly used by government or party officials or others 
having official responsibilities in the economy. 

Railroads 

Railroads were the most important component of the Soviet trans- 
portation system. They carried freight over great distances, and 
historically they have contributed to the economic development of 
the Soviet Union as efficient carriers of materials between producers 
and users, both domestic and foreign. 

Historical Background, 1913-39 

On the eve of World War I, imperial Russia had a rail network 
extending 58,500 kilometers. In 1913 it carried 132.4 million tons 



546 



Transportation and Communications 

of freight over an average distance of 496 kilometers, and 184.8 
million passengers boarded its trains. In 1918, following the Bol- 
shevik Revolution (see Glossary), the new regime nationalized the 
railroads. During the Civil War (1918-21), the railroads played 
a strategic role in the Bolshevik government's struggle against both 
White forces and invading foreign armies but suffered serious losses 
and damage in tracks, locomotives, rolling stock, yards, and sta- 
tions. In 1920 Vladimir I. Lenin directed the first plan for nation- 
wide development of the economy, which created the State 
Commission on the Electrification of Russia (Gosudarstvennaia 
komissiia po elektrifikatsii Rossii — Goelro). It called for the elec- 
trification of the country over a ten- to fifteen-year period, the de- 
velopment of eight economic areas, and the reconstruction of the 
transportation network. Railroads were assigned the task of link- 
ing the economic areas and of transporting raw materials to in- 
dustrial producers and finished goods to users. To that end, the 
regime provided for the electrification of the most important main 
lines and the construction of new lines. 

During the 1920s and 1930s, transportation, and in particular 
the railroads, played a leading economic role and experienced rapid 
development. Feliks E. Dzerzhinskii, the chairman of the dreaded 
Vecheka (see Glossary) and the commissar of internal affairs, was 
also named the commissar of railways. Because of his first two po- 
sitions, Dzerzhinskii ensured a rapid development of the railroads. 
New rail lines were built between the eastern regions and the in- 
dustrial areas in the west. By 1925 some 4,000 kilometers of new 
lines had been laid in both the European and the Asian portions 
of the Soviet Union, including the first electrified line, an indus- 
trial spur from Baku to Surakhany completed in 1926. 

During the First Five-Year Plan (1928-32), the railroad network 
was repaired, improved, and expanded. The plan recognized that 
industrial complexes (see Glossary), such as the Ural-Kuznetsk coal 
and iron complex, needed transportation links. Plans called for con- 
necting the Siberian and Central Asian areas, rich in natural or 
agricultural resources — ores, timber, coal, cotton, and wheat — to 
manufacturers and consumers in the western portions of the coun- 
try. Thus the Turkestan- Siberian Railway, 1,450 kilometers long, 
was built, along with the Central Kazakhstan and the Caucasus 
railroads, among other lines. The European portion of the coun- 
try also saw new lines laid, connecting industrial areas with their 
sources of raw materials. 

In the 1930s, the railroads introduced new rolling stock and 
locomotives that contributed to better performance. In the mid- 
19308, diesel-electric locomotives began to be used. Although 



547 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

more costly to produce and to maintain than the electric locomo- 
tives and also less powerful and slower, diesel-electric locomotives 
had several advantages over the steam locomotives in use, particu- 
larly under existing operating conditions. Fuel-efficient, diesel- 
electric locomotives covered long distances between refuelings, re- 
quired minimal maintenance between runs, sustained good speeds, 
damaged tracks less, used standardized spare parts, and offered 
operating flexibility. In contrast to the United States and Canada, 
two countries also employing railroads to cover vast expanses, the 
change from steam to diesel-electric traction in the Soviet Union 
was initially very slow, in large measure because of a scarcity of 
trained manpower, maintenance facilities, and spare parts. 

During the Second Five- Year Plan (1933-37), new rolling stock, 
including freight cars of new design, was also produced. Although 
most freight cars were still of the two- axle type with a payload vary- 
ing between twenty and sixty tons, specialized four-axle cars, such 
as hoppers and tippers of up to seventy tons, began to enter ser- 
vice. The new rolling stock was equipped with safety and labor 
saving devices, such as automatic braking and automatic couplings, 
which increased safety and allowed more efficient train handling 
at classification yards. The higher speeds and heavier train weights 
made possible by more modern traction and rolling stock in turn 
required heavier rails, improved cross ties, and ballast. The auto- 
matic block signal system and centralized traffic control increased 
the operating efficiency of trains. 

Despite the modernization program, Soviet railroads lagged be- 
hind the performance levels set by the plans. Ineffective manage- 
ment, labor problems, such as poor work attitudes, and a high 
accident rate contributed to the failures. On the average, railcars 
and locomotives were idle about 71 percent and 53 percent of their 
operational time, respectively. Yet industrialization efforts placed 
increasing demands on the railroads. The military authorities were 
also concerned about the poor performance of the railroads, fear- 
ing their inability to support national defense requirements. 

From 1928 to 1940, the length of operating lines grew from 
76,900 kilometers to 106,100 kilometers and included 1,900 kilo- 
meters of electrified lines. Freight traffic more than quadrupled 
from 93.4 billion ton- kilometers to 420.7 billion ton-kilometers. 
Passenger traffic also increased in the same period, from 24.5 bil- 
lion passenger-kilometers to 100.4 billion passenger-kilometers. This 
growth in freight and passenger traffic was made possible by track 
improvements, new rolling stock, locomotives, signaling and con- 
trol equipment and procedures, and new and more efficient clas- 
sification yards. 



548 



Passengers buying food at a stop on the Trans-Siberian Railway 
Women painting a center line on the main highway 
between Kharkov and Kiev, Ukrainian Republic 
Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 



549 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 
World War II 

After the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact of 1939, the Soviet 
Union occupied Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, eastern Poland, and 
portions of Finland and Romania (see Prelude to War, ch. 2). Con- 
sequently, before Germany's 1941 attack on the Soviet Union, the 
size of the Soviet rail network increased by the assets located in 
these areas and countries. During the Soviet-Finnish War (Novem- 
ber 1939 to March 1940), Soviet railroads supported military oper- 
ations. Over 20 percent of the rolling stock was used to supply the 
operations against the Finnish forces. Although military cargo ship- 
ments originated in many parts of the country, they all fed into 
the October and Murmansk railroads in areas where few highways 
were able to handle motor transport. This fact and the distance 
that freight had to travel to the front combined to cause unloading 
bottienecks at final destination stations and yards. Although delays 
were substantial, civilian and military railroad authorities learned 
important lessons from the Finnish campaign. 

During World War II, railroads were of major importance in 
supporting military operations as well as in providing for the in- 
creased needs of the wartime economy. Because of their impor- 
tance and vulnerability, trains, tracks, yards, and other facilities 
became the prime targets of the German air force and, in areas 
close to the front, of German artillery. 

Railroad operations during the war corresponded to the main 
phases of military operations. The first phase extended from the 
German offensive on June 22, 1941, to the Red Army's counter- 
offensive, which culminated in a Soviet victory at Stalingrad in 
February 1943. During this phase, the railroads evacuated peo- 
ple, industrial plants, and their own rolling stock to the eastern 
areas of the country. From July to November 1941, some 1.5 mil- 
lion carloads of freight were moved eastward. The railroads also 
carried troops and military materiel from rear areas to the front. 
All of the operations were accomplished under threatened or actual 
enemy fire. 

The second phase extended throughout most of 1943, when the 
Red Army slowly advanced against strong German resistance. The 
railroads coped with increasing demands for transportation services 
as industrial plants increased production. In addition, the Red Army 
relied heavily on the railroads to move personnel and supplies for 
major operations. Thus, during the first three months of the Kursk 
campaign (March to July 1943), three major rail lines averaged 
about 2,800 cars with military cargo per day, reaching a daily peak 
of 3,249 in May. Moreover, as the Soviet forces regained territories, 



550 



Metro station interior, Moscow 
Passengers on the Moscow metro 
Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 



551 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

military and civilian railroad construction teams restored and rebuilt 
trackage destroyed by the retreating enemy. 

In the third phase, from early 1944 to the end of the war in May 
1945, the Red Army rapidly extended the front westward, caus- 
ing the distances between production facilities (in the Ural Moun- 
tains and Siberia) and military consumers to grow accordingly, 
thereby further straining railroad resources. The Red Army's 
Belorussian offensive, which was launched on June 23, 1944, re- 
quired, during its buildup phase, 440,000 freight cars, or 65 per- 
cent of Soviet rolling stock. In early 1945, the Red Army pursued 
German forces into neighboring countries, requiring the rail- 
roads to cope with different track widths, which went from 1 ,520- 
millimeter-gauge track to 1 ,435-millimeter-gauge track in Romania, 
Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, and eventually in Germany itself. 

Despite the effort made to haul men and materiel to the front 
and to provide at least some service to the civilian sector, as well 
as to restore operations in war-damaged areas, the Soviet Union 
managed to build 6,700 kilometers of new lines during the war 
years. The new lines tapped areas rich in the mineral resources 
that were required for the war effort or shortened the distances be- 
tween important economic regions. Of the 52,400 kilometers of 
Soviet main track roadway damaged during the war, 48,800 kilo- 
meters were restored by May 1945. About 166,000 freight cars were 
destroyed, and the number of locomotives decreased by about 1,000, 
although almost 2,000 were furnished by the United States as part 
of an agreement authorized by its Lend-Lease Law (see Glossary). 

The Postwar Period, 1946-60 

During the postwar recovery period, the railroads played a key 
role in rebuilding the national economy, in both the industrial and 
the agricultural sectors. To enable the railroads to carry out as- 
signments, improvements had to be made in traction equipment, 
rolling stock, roadbeds, stations, yards, and traffic control equip- 
ment. New diesel-electric and electric locomotives were produced, 
and heavier rails allowed increased axle loads and train speeds. 
Automatic block signaling systems also contributed to higher speeds 
and better traffic control. Electrified lines were slowly extended. 
Although the Fourth Five-Year Plan (1945-50) provided for the 
restoration of damaged rolling stock and rail facilities, the Fifth 
Five-Year Plan (1951-55) emphasized new construction. The plan's 
goals were severely underfulfilled, mainly in production of freight 
cars, trackage, and other equipment, but freight turnover was 57 
percent above plan. This achievement was made possible by in- 
creased train loads, higher operating speeds, more efficient loading 



552 



Transportation and Communications 

and off-loading procedures, and higher labor productivity. The 
higher speeds and higher number of average daily runs of locomo- 
tives hauling freight were made possible by growing numbers of 
diesel-electric and electric locomotives coming into service. 

At the urging of CPSU first secretary Nikita S. Khrushchev, 
in the late 1950s electrification proceeded on some high-density pas- 
senger and freight lines. Khrushchev gave priority* to railroads in 
the Ural Mountains area and to those connecting the Urals with 
southeastern and central European areas and with Siberia and other 
eastern regions. By the end of 1960, the railroads had a network 
of 125,800 kilometers of lines, some 13,800 kilometers of which 
were electrified. 

Beginning in the early 1960s, the railroads experienced a pe- 
riod of prosperity. Freight traffic grew rapidly, by 59 percent be- 
tween 1961 and 1970, while passenger traffic increased by 50 
percent. New equipment improved labor productivity. More electric 
and diesel-electric locomotives entering service, combined with im- 
proved tracks and roadbeds, increased net train weights and speeds. 
In the late 1960s, as the growth of net train weights and speeds 
leveled off, train density — the number of trains moving on a given 
track — increased, thus allowing further increases in freight carried. 
Nevertheless, in the early 1970s train productivity continued to 
grow, but at declining rates. By 1975 the railroads reached their 
limits in terms of traffic density and train speeds and weights. Sub- 
sequently, the railroads strained to satisfy the demands of the na- 
tional economy. Between 1977 and 1982, the total tonnage of 
shipments stagnated, increasing only from 3.723 billion tons origi- 
nated (see Glossary) to 3.725 billion tons originated. Other indi- 
cators dropped — such as the average daily distance traveled by 
locomotives and cars, and speeds — the result of ever increasing track 
congestion. Additional factors contributing to poor railroad per- 
formance in the late 1970s and early 1980s were a deteriorating 
labor discipline and a decline in the quality of repairs and main- 
tenance. 

In 1983 recovery from the slump started when managers reduced 
traffic congestion and made train and other operations more effi- 
cient. Use of electrically synchronized double and triple engines 
made running heavier trains possible and reduced traffic congestion. 

In the late 1980s, railroads carried a larger share of freight and 
passengers longer distances than any other transportation system 
in the Soviet Union. In 1986 railroads transported 3.8 trillion ton- 
kilometers of freight, or a 47 percent share of all freight carried 
by all systems (see table 39, Appendix A). At the end of 1986, the 



553 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

railroads reached a length of 145,600 kilometers, of which 50,600 
kilometers, or almost 35 percent, were electrified. 

Organization and Equipment of the Railroads 

The Soviet Railroads (Sovetskie zheleznye dorogi — SZD) were 
managed and operated by the all-union (see Glossary) Ministry 
of Railways. The ministry was divided into twenty-three main ad- 
ministrations, each responsible for an overall segment of the rail- 
roads' operating or administrative management. Directly under 
the ministry were the thirty-two regional railroads, which in fact 
constituted the SZD. The railroads were named after republics, 
major cities, river basins, or larger geographic areas. The October 
Railroad, headquartered in Leningrad, was of course named in 
honor of the October (Bolshevik) Revolution. Each regional rail- 
road, except the Moldavian, was subdivided into divisions. The 
divisions were generally named after their headquartered stations 
(see table 40, Appendix A). 

In 1 989 the most important lines carried heavy freight and pas- 
senger traffic and were electrified. Among them were lines linking 
industrial areas, maritime ports, and foreign countries. Also, major 
population centers were interconnected and linked to vacation areas. 
Lines with steep grades, as in mountainous regions, were often elec- 
trified (see table 41, Appendix A). 

The railroads had about 7,000 marshaling yards, of which 100 
were of major importance. Computer technology has gradually in- 
creased the efficiency and quality of train handling at the yards, 
many of which had centralized hump release controls and auto- 
matic rolling speed devices. Such automated procedures as check- 
ing a train's weight and composition, as well as modernized 
communications facilities, have sped train formation and dispatch 
and provided yard management with advance information on the 
composition of arriving trains. Nevertheless, in the mid-1980s clas- 
sification yards were unable to process efficiendy the required num- 
ber of trains. 

Automated signaling equipment and devices helped improve 
traffic control and train safety, although the latter remained a 
problem in 1989. Some 20 percent of track lines were under cen- 
tralized train control. This enabled the railroads to increase track 
capacity substantially, particularly over long distances. In 1989 more 
than 60 percent of the network was equipped with the automatic 
block system, which regulated distances between trains, as well as 
with automatic cab signaling. 

Electric and diesel-electric locomotives were the basic categories 
of traction. Within these categories were about twenty versions of 



554 



Streetcar taking on passengers in Leningrad, Russian Republic 

Courtesy Jonathan Tetzlaff 
Kirov Factory metro station, Leningrad, Russian Republic 

Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 

555 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

electric locomotives and about twenty-five versions of diesel-electric 
locomotives. In 1981 some 1,377 electric locomotives and 6,870 
diesel-electric locomotives were in mainline freight service. The 
self-propelled ER 200 train set operated on limited- schedule ser- 
vice on the Moscow-Leningrad line in the mid-1980s. Composed 
of traction units at each end and between three and six married 
sets of powered cars, the ER 200 had a maximum speed of 200 
kilometers per hour and was the Soviet counterpart to French, 
Japanese, and American high-speed trains. 

In 1982 the railroads had an estimated 1,856,000 freight cars. 
The fleet consisted for the most part of four-axle (two bogies) cars 
of sixty-two- to sixty-five- ton capacity. Nevertheless, six- axle (three 
bogies) and eight-axle (four bogies) cars of 120- to 125-ton capacity 
were increasing in numbers. These high-tonnage cars raised train 
weights without extending train lengths. Maximum axle-loads 
ranged from twenty- three to twenty-five tons. In 1989 all cars were 
equipped with automatic couplers and brakes, and over half had 
roller bearings. New freight cars were designed for maximum speeds 
of 120 kilometers per hour, but normal operating speeds were lim- 
ited to 90 kilometers per hour at full load and 100 kilometers per 
hour when empty. 

In addition to the basic types of freight cars — boxcars, hoppers, 
gondolas, and flatcars — the inventory included specialized types 
for transporting specific cargos, such as automobiles, dry and li- 
quid bulk materials, grain, perishables, and materials under pres- 
sure. Several types of cars transported passengers. Depending on 
train sets, their passenger capacity ranged from 384 to 1,484. Long- 
distance and international trains were composed of compartmented 
cars, sleepers, and dining cars. New cars were designed for maxi- 
mum speeds of 200 kilometers per hour. Most of the passenger 
rolling stock was of foreign manufacture, primarily from the Ger- 
man Democratic Republic (East Germany). 

Passenger Operations 

Since 1975 passenger transportation by train has been second 
to bus in terms of total fares boarded. Nevertheless, in 1986 trains 
carried more than 4.3 billion passengers, of which more than 3.9 
billion were on suburban lines (see table 42, Appendix A). Subur- 
ban and short-haul passenger volume represented about 90 per- 
cent of the passengers carried by train. In 1985 the railroads ran 
nearly 10,000 passenger train pairs, about 500 of which were long 
distance, another 500 were local (trains not crossing the bound- 
aries of a given line), and nearly 9,000 were suburban or other 
types. During the peak summer season, daily passenger train traffic 



556 



Transportation and Communications 

increased dramatically, to approximately 19,000 long-distance and 
17,000 local trains. To resolve, or at least alleviate, congestion in 
the summer, train lengths were increased. Thus, eighteen-car trains 
were extended to twenty-four cars on heavily used lines from 
Moscow, while in 1986 test trains of thirty-two cars were run out 
of Moscow and Leningrad to Simferopol' in Crimea. 

The most important passenger railroads in the mid-1980s were 
the Moscow, October, Gor'kiy, Southern, Donetsk, Dnepr, Sverd- 
lovsk, and Northern Caucasus. These served the Soviet Union's 
most densely populated areas. The two most heavily traveled axes 
were the Leningrad-Moscow-Donetsk to Crimea or the Caucasus 
area and the Moscow to Khabarovsk (8,540 kilometers) and 
Vladivostok (9,300 kilometers) areas. On the latter axis, most pas- 
sengers traveled distances of only 500 to 700 kilometers, rather than 
the full length. The seven major passenger rail centers in the Euro- 
pean part of the Soviet Union were in Moscow, Leningrad, Tbilisi, 
Khar'kov, Kiev, Simferopol', and Adler; the major center in the 
Asian part of the country was at Novosibirsk (see fig. 18). 

The Baykal-Amur Main Line 

The vast Siberian region between Lake Baykal and the lower 
Amur River, called the Transbaykal (or Zabaykaliye), is rich in 
natural and mineral resources. Yet until recently, it lacked ade- 
quate transportation to the rest of the country. Its main commu- 
nication artery was the overburdened Trans-Siberian Railway (see 
Glossary), running well south of it. Although providing the Trans- 
baykal region with a railroad was considered in the nineteenth cen- 
tury, work on the Baykal-Amur Main Line (Baykalo-Amurskaya 
Magistral' — BAM; see Glossary) did not begin until 1974. The 
BAM was finally opened in 1989. 

Survey and construction crews overcame formidable geological, 
climatic, topographic, and engineering challenges, including rivers, 
ground ice, unstable soil, seismic areas, mountains, and extremes 
of cold and heat. About two-thirds of the BAM trackage crossed 
areas of ground ice that caused frost heave and other unstable soil 
conditions. In the summer, permafrost created large bogs that ham- 
pered roadbed construction, and embankments sank into the mar- 
shy terrain during the summer thaw. To prevent such problems, 
engineers insulated the strip of marsh along the tracks to keep it 
in a continuously frozen state. Seismic activity along some 1,000 
kilometers of the line also caused problems, triggering avalanches 
and landslides. Topographic obstacles were formidable as well. 
To cross the mountains, crews had to pierce over thirty kilometers 
of tunnels. The BAM also crossed more than 3,000 streams, and 



557 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

because of the permafrost new bridge construction techniques had 
to be devised. On average, the roadbed for the BAM required mov- 
ing 100,000 cubic meters of earth — either cutting or filling — for 
each kilometer of track. 

The mean annual temperature along the BAM ranges from 
- 10°C to - 4°C, with extremes of - 58°C in the winter to 36°C 
in the summer. To operate their trains under these severe climatic 
conditions, the railroads used special equipment, locomotives, roll- 
ing stock, and fixed installations. Snow plows, snow-melting 
machines, switch heaters, and other specialized equipment were 
indispensable in the winter. Rails made of special steel that does 
not become brittle at the very low temperatures of the Siberian 
winters were also used. 

From its western terminus at Ust'-Kut to its eastern end at 
Komsomol' sk-na-Amure, the BAM stretched for 3,145 kilometers, 
between 180 and 300 kilometers north of the Trans-Siberian Rail- 
way. It had a total of 5,000 kilometers of main line and yard track. 
In addition to the east- west main line, a 402-kilometer perpendic- 
ular line, the "Little BAM," ran from Bamovskaya on the Trans- 
Siberian Railway north to Tynda on the BAM and thence to Ber- 
kakit to serve the important mining and industrial area of Neryun- 
gri. In the late 1980s, an extension to the Yakutiya region, rich 
in timber and minerals, was under way. 

The BAM and its feeder routes, both rail and highway, served 
an area of approximately 1.2 million square kilometers. Although 
track laying was completed in 1986, it was not yet in full opera- 
tion in 1989. The projected freight traffic on the BAM was planned 
at 35 million tons per year, with trains of up to 9,000 tons. 
Moreover, the government planned for the BAM to become an 
important part of the Siberian land bridge from Japan, via the port 
of Sovetskaya Gavan', to West European destinations, saving 20 
percent in time over the maritime route. 

Other New Construction 

Important new railroad construction was under way in the Arc- 
tic regions, Siberia, the Far East, and the Caucasus. Thus, the 
Urengoy-Yamburg rail line was being built to serve the Yamburg 
natural gas deposits north of Urengoy. In the Pechora River area, 
a line from the town of Synia, on the Moscow- Vorkuta road, was 
being extended about 120 kilometers to the Usinsk oil fields. Plans 
were made for a 540-kilometer spur from Labytnangi, southeast 
of Vorkuta, to the gas fields at Bolvanskiy Nos on the Yamal Penin- 
sula. The project has been hampered by summer thaws. Engineers 
laying the rail line resolved the problem by insulating the strips 



558 




560 



Transportation and Communications 

of marsh along the track, thus keeping them in a continuous state 
of permafrost. In the Caucasus area, a new electrified line, almost 
200 kilometers long, was planned from Tbilisi through the Cauca- 
sus Mountains to Ordzhonikidze. Plans called for the Caucasus 
Mountain Pass Railroad to shorten by 960 kilometers the distance 
for trains from Tbilisi to Ordzhonikidze via Armavir. Several tun- 
nels, totaling forty-two kilometers, and numerous bridges have been 
planned. Originally scheduled for completion by the year 2000, 
the project was being stalled in 1989 by environmental groups. 

A 450-kilometer rail line from Makat, in the Kazakh Republic, 
to Aleksandrov Gay, in Saratovskaya Oblast in the Russian Repub- 
lic, was started in 1984 and was nearing completion in 1989. It 
was projected to cut over 1 ,000 kilometers from the route between 
Central Asia and Moscow. 

Metropolitan Railways 

The Ministry of Railways also operated metropolitan railway 
systems, or metros, in major cities. In 1987 eleven cities had one 
or more metro lines in operation, and ten others were either building 
or planning to build lines (see table 43, Appendix A). In late 1986, 
the length of all lines on the metro systems was 457 kilometers, 
and over 4.6 billion passengers rode on the combined metro sys- 
tems in that year. The eleven cities' operating systems had a fleet 
of about 5,950 passenger railcars in 1986. 

Automotive Transport 

Trucks, buses, and passenger automobiles were important 
primarily to local transportation systems. Trucks carried freight 
on short hauls except in areas not served by railroads or inland 
waterways. Almost all freight started or finished its journey on trucks 
but was carried greater distances by rail, ship, airplane, or pipe- 
line. Buses carried substantial numbers of passengers, for the most 
part on urban or short runs. Transportation by privately owned 
passenger automobiles, which were relatively few on a per capita 
basis, was not significant compared with public means. 

Development of Automotive Transport 

In 1910 a railroad car factory in Riga began producing the first 
passenger automobiles and trucks in imperial Russia. Under the 
Soviet regime, automotive transportation developed more slowly 
than in western Europe and the United States. As early as the 1930s, 
problems of poor road infrastructure, shortage of spare parts, and 
insufficient fueling, repair, and maintenance facilities plagued 



561 




560 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

automotive transportation. Some manufacturing plants were set 
up with Western help. 

During World War II, automotive production concentrated 
almost exclusively on trucks and light, jeep-like vehicles. Their chas- 
sis were also adapted for armored cars and amphibious and other 
types of military vehicles. During major battles and operations, 
automotive transportation carried needed troops and materiel to 
the front. While Leningrad lay besieged (1941-44), trucks, driv- 
ing over the frozen surface of Lake Ladoga, brought in about 
600,000 tons of supplies and brought out over 700,000 persons. 
During the entire war, Soviet automotive transport carried over 
101 million tons of freight in support of military operations. A siz- 
able portion of the Soviet vehicle fleet was provided by the United 
States as part of the lend-lease agreement. 

Since 1945 Soviet authorities have continued highway construc- 
tion, so that by 1987 the public road networks, which excluded 
roads of industrial and agricultural enterprises, amounted to 
1,609,900 kilometers, of which 1,196,000 kilometers were in the 
hard-surfaced category — concrete, asphalt, or gravel. Neverthe- 
less, about 40 percent of this category of roads were gravel. In ad- 
dition, there were 413,900 kilometers of unsurfaced roads. 

The road network varied in density according to the geographic 
area and the industrial concentration. Thus, the Estonian Repub- 
lic had the highest road density while the Russian and Kazakh 
republics had the lowest. The latter republics, however, contained 
vast, economically underdeveloped and sparsely populated areas. 
Overall, the European portion, excluding the extreme northern and 
Arctic areas, had the densest road network, particularly in areas 
having concentrations of industries and population (see fig. 19). 

In 1 989 many roads were not all-weather roads but rather were 
unimproved and unstable in bad weather, especially during thaws 
and rains. Except for 25,000 kilometers of all-weather surfaces, all 
rural roads in the European and Central Asian parts of the coun- 
try, as well as all roads in Siberia and the Far East, were little bet- 
ter than dirt tracks. Trucks, carrying light loads (fewer than four 
tons) and traveling at low speeds, broke down frequently. These 
roads caused delays in shipments, high fuel consumption, and in- 
creased tire wear. In marshy and permafrost areas, unsurfaced roads 
were usable only when the ground and rivers were frozen, from 
about November to May. Russians have coined a word, rasputitsa, 
to describe the time of year when roads are impassable. Repair 
and refueling facilities along rural roads were rare or nonexistent. 
Nevertheless, in rural areas, roads were the prime arteries for ship- 
ping farm products and bringing in the required equipment and 



562 




Figure 19. Major Roads, 1981 



Transportation and Communications 

supplies. Poor road conditions were a major factor in the Soviet 
Union's serious agricultural problems, particularly the one of perish- 
ables spoiling before they reached the market. Rural populations 
relied on bus transportation over poor roads for essential access 
to urban areas. 

Freight Transportation by Trucks 

Without a developed network of highways and service facilities, 
Soviet authorities have essentially relegated trucking to local and 
short hauls, except in remote areas not having rail or ship trans- 
port. In 1986, in terms of freight turnover, trucks ranked fourth 
among all transportation systems, with a 6 percent share. Neverthe- 
less, trucking had 81 percent of the tons originated by all freight 
transportation systems combined (see table 44, Appendix A). This 
anomaly indicated that trucks were primarily used on short hauls, 
averaging about eighteen kilometers. Long-distance or intercity 
hauling was mainly by railroads and inland waterways. The agricul- 
tural sector accounted for about 80 percent of freight originated 
on trucks. In 1986 freight transported by trucks amounted to almost 
27 billion tons originated and 488.5 billion ton-kilometers (see Glos- 
sary). Common carrier trucks accounted for 6.7 billion tons origi- 
nated and 141 billion ton-kilometers. Trucking's most important 
customers were agriculture, industry, construction, and commerce. 

Trucking enterprises were not able to meet the strong demand 
for their services. Among the contributing factors to the industry's 
failure were inadequate roads, inefficient traffic organization — 
some 45 percent of vehicles traveled empty — and prolonged peri- 
ods of unserviceability resulting from shortages of spare parts, 
drivers, tires, and fuel. Even in the largest metropolitan areas, re- 
fueling and repair facilities were scarce by Western standards. In 
rural areas, particularly in Siberia and the Far North, such facili- 
ties were often nonexistent. Repair and maintenance of vehicles 
belonging to transportation enterprises (see Glossary) and collec- 
tive farms (see Glossary) were performed at central facilities, which 
sometimes belonged to manufacturing plants. Repair was hampered 
by a chronic shortage of spare parts. Given the extent of poor roads, 
even the absence of roads, many cargo vehicles were of the rugged, 
cross-country type, with all- wheel traction similar to those used by 
the armed forces as tactical vehicles. Many vehicles were specially 
designed for cold weather operations. 

Passenger Transportation 

In the mid-1980s, buses were the primary means of passenger 
transportation, accounting for almost 44 percent of traffic on all 



565 




564 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

transportation systems in 1986 (see table 45, Appendix A). Indeed, 
in 1986 public transportation buses carried the most passen- 
gers — 48.8 billion passengers boarded — of all means of transpor- 
tation. Most passengers traveled short distances on intracity and 
suburban runs. In 1986 the average distance traveled by a pas- 
senger was 9.5 kilometers. In that year, taxicabs carried more than 

I . 4 billion fares. In the 1980s, private automobiles were rare com- 
pared with most Western nations. In 1985 the Soviet Union had 

II. 7 million automobiles. Some Western authorities believed that 
about one-third of them were owned by the CPSU or the gov- 
ernment. 

Inland Waterways 

The Soviet Union used an extensive inland navigational network, 
both natural (rivers and lakes) and man made (canals and reser- 
voirs). The waterways enabled a variety of general and special- 
purpose river craft to transport the output of mines, forests, col- 
lective farms, and factories to domestic and foreign destinations. 
Some Soviet ships took on cargo at river ports located well inland 
and delivered it directly to ports on the Arctic, Atlantic, or Pacific 
oceans or on the Baltic, North, or Mediterranean seas. An inland 
passenger fleet transported millions of commuters, as well as busi- 
ness and pleasure travelers. Inland waterways were of prime im- 
portance to the economic viability of remote Arctic, Siberian, and 
Far Eastern regions, where they constituted the main, and often 
the sole, means of surface transportation. 

Development of Waterways 

Following the Bolshevik Revolution, the new regime decided first 
on reconstruction and then on expansion and modernization of the 
inland waterway system. The plan encompassed opening to navi- 
gation, or expanding navigation on, major rivers, particularly in 
the Asian part of the Soviet Union, and included new infrastruc- 
ture ashore. 

In the 1930s, two major canals were constructed: one connect- 
ing the Baltic and White seas, 227 kilometers long, with nineteen 
locks; the other connecting Moscow to the Volga River, 128 kilo- 
meters long (see fig. 20). Both were built using prisoners, the first 
at a cost of about 225,000 lives. By 1940 about 108,900 kilometers 
of river and 4,200 kilometers of man-made waterways were in oper- 
ation, which allowed movement of 73.9 million tons originated of 
freight. During World War II, most of the inland fleet was con- 
verted to landing craft for river-crossing operations. As a result 



566 



Transportation and Communications 

of hostilities, inland navigation suffered losses in vessels, canals, 
and shore installations. 

The Fourth Five-Year Plan provided for the restoration of navi- 
gation on major waterways in the European part of the Soviet Union 
after World War II. It included repair of the fleet, construction 
of new vessels, and rebuilding and expansion of port installations. 
In the 1950s, construction of the 101 -kilometer canal connecting 
the Volga and Don rivers, also built using prisoners, brought all 
the major inland river ports within the reach of the Black, Baltic, 
Caspian, Azov, and White seas. The navigable length of the in- 
land waterway network reached its peak of 144,500 kilometers in 
1970. Thereafter, it began to decline as, on the one hand, distance- 
cutting reservoirs and canals were opened to navigation and, on 
the other hand, navigation was discontinued on rivers with a low 
traffic density. Thus by 1987 the length of inland waterways under 
navigation was reduced to 122,500 kilometers, exclusive of the Cas- 
pian Sea. Navigational channels were deepened, and canals and 
locks were widened. New waterways, including tributaries of major 
rivers, were developed in Siberia and the Far East. As part of that 
process, the ports of Omsk and Novosibirsk were expanded, and 
new ports were built at Tomsk, Surgut, and Tobol'sk. Equipment 
capable of handling twenty-ton containers was installed at Kras- 
noyarsk, Osetrovsk, and ports in the Yakutiya region. The most 
heavily navigated sections of Siberia's Ob', Irtysh, Yenisey, and 
Lena rivers were deepened to the "minimum guaranteed depth" 
of three meters. 

Further development of navigation on smaller rivers in the Far 
East was begun in the early 1980s, and navigation increased on 
other waterways serving industrialized areas. By 1985 the Volga 
and Kama river locks had reached their traffic limits and required 
widening. To respond to increased demand and to replace obso- 
lete vessels, 1,020 dry bulk and oil barges, 247 passenger vessels, 
and 945 pusher tugs, freighters, and tankers were put into service 
between 1981 and 1985. 

The Waterway System 

In 1987 the Russian Republic's Ministry of the River Fleet and 
the main river transportation administrations of the other repub- 
lics were, among them, responsible for the 122,500 kilometers of 
navigable rivers and man-made waterways. Soviet inland water- 
ways are divided into four main categories by depth: super main 
line, with a guaranteed depth of four meters; main line, with at 
least 2.6 meters of depth; local, with up to 1.4 meters of depth; 



567 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 




Figure 20. Major Inland Waterways, 1984 

and small river, with a water depth of up to one meter. In the 
European part of the country, the Volga, Kama, Don, and Dnepr 
rivers and their reservoirs formed the 7,400-kilometer-long United 
Deep-Water Network. This network had thirty-six water reservoirs, 
ninety-two locks, and a "guaranteed depth" of four meters on 90 
percent of its length. Although many tributaries of large rivers fall 
generally into the local and small river categories, they neverthe- 
less contributed importantly to many regions' economies, and they 



568 



Transportation and Communications 

represented about 55 percent of the navigable rivers in Siberia and 
the Far East. 

The river fleet was composed of a wide variety of cargo and pas- 
senger vessels and special-purpose ships, such as tugs and icebreak- 
ers. Dry cargo river ships ranged from 150 to 5,000 tons in capacity, 
whereas oil barges ranged up to 9,000 tons. Barge sets, that is, 
motorized barges pushing one or more "dumb" barges, totaled 
up to 16,000 tons on Siberian rivers and up to 22,000 tons on the 
Volga-Kama waterways. 

Among the ships, boats, and motorized and "dumb" barges were 
specialized vessels designed to carry fruit, grain, ore, cement, con- 
tainers, automobiles, and refrigerated cargo. A variety of passenger 
vessels, including hydrofoils and air-cushion vehicles, had a pas- 
senger capacity from a few dozen to 1,000 people. In a special 
category were the river-ocean vessels, which included dry bulk car- 
riers (2,700 to 3,000 tons) and liquid tankers (4,800 to 5,000 tons). 
They made possible direct shipments between domestic inland ports 
and some 300 maritime and river ports in twenty-six countries in 
Europe, North Africa, and Asia, including Iran and Japan, as well 
as Soviet ports on the Arctic Ocean. The fleet of tugboats, both 
pullers and pushers, the latter equipped with automatic couplers 
for barge trains, was well adapted to general and specialized oper- 
ations, including towing huge timber rafts. The tugboats' engine 
power ranged from 110 kilowatts to 2,940 kilowatts. 

All navigable rivers in the Soviet Union are affected by ice. De- 
pending on the region, the yearly navigation season has been as 
short as 60 days on northern rivers and as long as 230 days on rivers 
in warmer climates. Icebreakers were therefore an essential com- 
ponent of the Soviet inland fleet in order to extend operations be- 
yond the onset of ice. They were particularly important in the 
mouths of rivers flowing into the Arctic Ocean, where ice tended 
to accumulate because of differences between the thawing seasons 
of rivers and seas. Icebreakers also helped river vessels to reach 
their wintering ports before the end of the navigable season. 

River Ports and Facilities 

River ports facilitated the transfer of cargo from one mode of trans- 
portation to another. Port facilities, such as piers on free-flowing 
rivers, have been constructed to account for the seasonal fluctua- 
tions of water levels, which sometimes reach several meters. In 1985 
the Russian Republic's inland waterway ports had 162 kilometers 
of mooring facilities, half of which were provided with mechanized 
transloading equipment. The basic portal cranes were of five-, ten- 
and fifteen-ton lifting capacity, while container-handling cranes, 



569 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

having capacities of up to 30.5 tons, were available in major ports. 
Floating cranes, conveyor belts, and pneumatic loading/unload- 
ing devices for grain, granular materials, and bulk cargo were in 
use. In 1985 river ports in the Russian Republic had 2,220 pier 
and floating cranes. 

Passenger Transportation 

Passenger transportation constituted an important function of 
the river fleet, although its share of the overall passenger traffic 
was small. In 1986 river boats carried 136 million fares. On major 
deep-water rivers, intercity or suburban passengers traveled on 
rapid — up to ninety kilometers per hour — hydrofoils. On small or 
shallow rivers, service was provided by surface skimmers and air- 
cushion vehicles. 

The bulk of river travel was, however, for excursions and cruises. 
Big river liners, some of a catamaran type, equipped with cabins, 
dining rooms, and recreational facilities, took from 120 to 1,000 
passengers on one-day excursions and on cruises of longer dura- 
tion. On major summer holidays, the Moscow Navigation Com- 
pany has transported between 80,000 and 100,000 passengers daily 
to and from recreational and tourist areas. 

Merchant Marine 

The Soviet Union has the world's most extensive coastline — 
along two oceans and twelve seas — which has served as a trans- 
portation link to the rest of the world. The Arctic Ocean and its 
seas provided international as well as domestic lines of communi- 
cation to the economically emerging northern areas and constituted 
a water bridge between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The Pa- 
cific Ocean opened the Soviet Far East areas to trade with Japan 
and the Pacific rim countries. Although access to oceans was more 
restricted, the Baltic and Black seas provided the Soviet Union with 
outlets to the North Atlantic and South Atiantic and to the Mediter- 
ranean Sea, respectively. A fleet of modern coastal vessels provided 
an essential, and frequently the sole, transportation link between 
the extreme northern and the Far East parts of the country and 
the industrialized base. For foreign trade, the Soviet Union relied 
on a well-equipped and specialized fleet of vessels calling at the 
ports of practically every maritime nation in the world. Besides 
carrying over half of the country's export-import freight, the Mer- 
chant Fleet (Morskoi flot — Morflot) was an effective adjunct to the 
Soviet Naval Forces and served the country's political and mili- 
tary needs. 



570 



Transportation and Communications 

Initial Developments 

Between the early 1920s, when the Soviet regime consolidated 
its power, and the end of the 1950s, when the merchant marine 
and ports had recovered from the damage of World War II, the 
Soviet merchant fleet ranked well below those of the major seafar- 
ing nations of the world. In the 1960s, however, new economic 
and political realities caused the Soviet Union to dramatically ex- 
pand its merchant fleet, ports, shipyards, and related facilities. First, 
the regime decided to expand its foreign trade, and thus its in- 
fluence, with the growing number of newly independent African 
and Asian nations. Second, the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, the 
widening conflict in Vietnam with Soviet support for Hanoi, and 
the relationship with China demonstrated the need for a merchant 
fleet ready to respond to foreign policy and military requirements. 
For example, in 1960 Soviet merchant ships carried 45 million tons 
of freight, but by 1965 they carried more than double the tonnage, 
almost 92 million tons, and two years later, in 1967, they trans- 
ported nearly 141.5 million tons of freight. In terms of units and 
tonnage, the merchant fleet went from 590 ships of 3.3 million dead- 
weight tons in 1959 to 990 vessels of 8 million deadweight tons in 
1965, thereby rising from twelfth to sixth rank in merchant fleets 
of the world. The new freighters ranged from 9,000 to 13,500 dead- 
weight tons and were acquired from domestic as well as East Ger- 
man, Polish, Yugoslav, and Finnish shipyards. 

The 1970s saw a continued expansion of the merchant fleet, but 
the vessels put into operation were generally specialized types that 
had been introduced by Western shipowners in the second half 
of the 1960s: container carriers, roll-on/roll-off (RO/RO), lighter- 
aboard-ship (LASH), roU-on/float-off (RO/FLO), RO/RO-container 
carriers, very large crude carriers (VLCC), and very large bulk 
carriers (VLBC). They were put into service on expanding lines 
to the Americas, including the Great Lakes, and to Asia, Africa, 
and Australia. New Soviet ports and shore installations capable 
of handling these ships were built or expanded (see fig. 21). Be- 
tween 1970 and 1980, the number of freight and passenger vessels 
grew from about 1,400 to 1,725, while their collective tonnage went 
from almost 12 million to almost 19 million deadweight tons. 

In the 1980s, the Soviet merchant marine continued to expand, 
although at a less frenetic pace than before. By the end of 1985, 
the merchant marine had 1,741 freight-carrying vessels, of which 
290 were tankers, reaching a total of about 20 million deadweight 
tons. The main types of cargo ships were general and bulk cargo 
freighters, multipurpose freighters, container ships, timber carriers 



571 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

and wood waste carriers, bulk carriers, ore-bulk-ore (ORO) car- 
riers, various tankers, refrigerator ships, and RO/RO, RO-FLO, 
and LASH vessels. 

Fleet Operations 

In an effort to attain the highest labor productivity and cost ef- 
ficiency, maritime authorities embarked on a policy of standardi- 
zation. For vessels, this meant standardization not only by mission 
and areas of operation but also by major components: engines, 
cargo-handling equipment, and electronics. The results were higher 
fuel efficiency, improved and more efficient repair and maintenance, 
increased cargo-carrying capacity (thus decreasing the relative per 
ton construction and operating costs), and increased speeds (thereby 
ensuring faster delivery and increased vessel productivity). New 
ship designs allowed speedier cargo handling and better space utili- 
zation and resulted in a higher carrying capacity per ship. Auto- 
mation and mechanization of shipboard operations increased labor 
productivity. For instance, automated control devices enabled oper- 
ation of a large cargo ship's engine room by one crewman. 

Most seas adjoining the Soviet coastline, particularly the Arctic 
Ocean, the northern Pacific Ocean, and the Baltic Sea, have short 
navigable seasons. To keep the sea-lanes open and prolong the 
navigable season, a sizable and diversified fleet of ice-breaking ves- 
sels was required. The vessels ranged from small harbor tug- 
icebreakers to large, nuclear-powered, oceangoing icebreakers, as 
well as Arctic freighters and tankers of up to 35,000 deadweight tons. 

Arctic freighters were especially constructed with reinforced hulls, 
resembling those of icebreakers, to enable the ships to proceed 
through ice up to one meter thick. Arctic freighters' superstruc- 
tures were protected against the severe weather to allow the crew 
to move from one part of the ship to another without being ex- 
posed to cold and ice. Deck de-icing equipment allowed them to 
operate at temperatures of as low as - 50 °C. 

In the late 1980s, the Soviet Union had the world's largest pas- 
senger vessel fleet. One of its major tasks was to provide transpor- 
tation to the Arctic and Far Eastern coastal areas, where ships were 
frequently the sole means of travel. Small vessels, such as hydrofoils 
seating about 120 passengers and reaching speeds up to forty kilo- 
meters per hour, operated in the coastal areas of the Baltic, Black, 
Azov, and Caspian seas. Old passenger liners, some built prior 
to World War II and acquired as war reparations, catered to for- 
eign cruise clientele, generally in contiguous waters. Modern and 
well-equipped cruise ships, however, either were built expressly 
for Morflot in foreign yards, mainly in East Germany, or were built 



572 




Figure 21. Major Maritime Ports, Airports, and Sea Routes, 1986 



574 



Transportation and Communications 

chiefly in the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and 
Britain for Western cruise lines and were subsequently acquired 
by Morflot in the 1970s and 1980s. With cabin accommodations 
for 250 to 700 passengers, they catered to Western tourists and 
plied the world's oceans from the Norwegian fjords to the South 
Pacific islands. In the mid-1980s, Morflot' s oceangoing passenger 
fleet numbered some eighty liners with a total of about 25,000 
berths. 

Morflot operated several major ferry lines, both international 
and domestic. In 1988 two important international train ferry lines 
were jointly operated, one with Bulgaria, the other with East Ger- 
many. The lines had been put into service to avoid transiting Roma- 
nian and Polish territory, respectively. The Soviet-Bulgarian ferry 
between Il'ichevsk and Varna began service in 1978. It has used 
two Soviet and two Bulgarian ships, each with a capacity for 108 
seventy-ton freight cars on three decks. This line has shortened by 
six days the delivery time between the two countries. 

In 1986 the Soviet-East German ferry service began between 
Klaipeda, in the Lithuanian Republic, and Mukran, on the island 
of Riigen in East Germany. When in full operation (scheduled for 
1990), the line was to use six Mukran-class ferryboats, three be- 
longing to each country. Each boat was designed to carry 103 freight 
cars of up to eight-four tons each that could roll on and off directly 
from the shore, thus reducing each boat's turnaround time to only 
four hours. The round trip between the two ports has taken only 
forty-eight hours. The annual peak capacity of the six ferries by 
1990 was projected at 5 million tons. Since 1984 a Baltic automo- 
bile ferry has been operating between Leningrad and Stockholm. 

Among the domestic routes were the Caspian Sea ferry lines, 
the Crimea-Caucasus lines, and the Sea of Japan line between 
Vanino and Kholmsk. Some automobile ferries in the Far East had 
trips lasting up to fifteen days and had cabin accommodations for 
432 passengers. 

The Soviet Union's freight and passenger fleets were supported 
in ports and at sea by a large diversified fleet of auxiliary craft. 
They included harbor and ocean tugs, oceangoing salvage and res- 
cue vessels, fire boats, various service craft, and floating cranes, 
as well as civil engineering craft, such as dredges, used in the con- 
struction and maintenance of harbors and navigational channels. 

In 1986 the Soviet Union had the world's largest oceangoing fish- 
ing fleet, comprising about 4,200 vessels under the jurisdiction of 
the Ministry of the Fishing Industry. Research and surveying ships 
numbered more than 200. They were for the most part not oper- 
ated by Morflot but by various institutes of the Academy of Sciences 



575 




574 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

(see Glossary) for oceanographic research and surveying, such as 
fisheries, marine biology, and oil and gas exploration. According 
to Western authorities, however, many of these ships were manned 
at least in part by naval crews and performed work for the Soviet 
Naval Forces. Usually, these were modern units outfitted with 
sophisticated equipment, including intelligence- gathering devices. 

Most Soviet ports fell into one of three categories. General cargo 
ports handled a variety of break-bulk, container, RO/RO, LASH, 
or bulk cargo ships at the same type of pier. Specialized ports trans- 
loaded dry or liquid bulk cargo, such as ores, coal, grain, petro- 
leum, and chemicals. They had automated transloading equipment 
suitable for a particular type of cargo. Major ports, and some 
smaller ones, had facilities and equipment to handle both types of 
ships. 

The merchant fleet's cargo, passenger, and auxiliary vessels con- 
stituted an indispensable logistical component of the Soviet Naval 
Forces and provided the armed forces with strategic sealift capa- 
bilities. According to the United States Department of Defense, 
Morflot ships, particularly RO/RO, RO/FLO, LASH, and com- 
bination RO/RO-container ships, were fast, versatile, and capa- 
ble of handling combat and combat support vehicles and equipment. 
Moreover, the majority were able to enter most of the world's har- 
bors. LASH and RO/FLO ships were capable of unloading their 
cargo at sea and could thereby support amphibious operations. 
RO/ROs and container ships required minimally prepared shore 
facilities to discharge their cargo. Nearly half the cargo ships were 
equipped with cranes capable of lifting the heaviest military armor 
and vehicles, thereby reducing the dependence on prepared port 
facilities. Morflot 's tankers and cargo vessels were also used for 
out-of-area refueling and replenishment of Soviet naval vessels oper- 
ating far from home waters. Merchant ships were sometimes 
equipped with sophisticated communications and navigational 
devices, served as intelligence gatherers, and had protection against 
chemical, biological, and radiological hazards. According to some 
Western naval authorities, many Soviet merchant and fishing vessels 
possessed mine-laying capabilities. In the event of hostilities, the 
Morflot passenger fleet, with a total of about 25,000 berths in peace- 
time, was capable of transporting several times that number of 
troops into operational areas. 

Civil Aviation 

The civilian Air Fleet (Aero not — Aeroflot) played a major role 
in transporting passengers but a minor role in transporting cargo. 
Civil aviation was the third most important transporter of passengers 



576 





Potemkin Steps leading to the main sea terminal, Odessa, 

Ukrainian Republic 

Hydrofoil on the Neva River, Leningrad, Russian Republic 

Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 

577 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

and other scientific and exploration missions, Aeroflot used spe- 
cially equipped airplanes and helicopters. Medical assistance and 
evacuation, especially in remote areas, was provided by aircraft 
such as the An- 14 and An-28 and by the Ka-26 and Mi-8 helicop- 
ters, which were able to operate from most level surfaces. Various 
types of agricultural missions were performed by the work horse, 
the An-2, and its updated version, the An-3, as well as the Ka-26 
helicopter. 

Aeroflot was also responsible for such services as ice patrol in 
the Arctic Ocean and escorting of ships through frozen seas, oil 
exploration, power line surveillance, and transportation and heavy 
lifting support on construction projects. For the latter tasks, Aero- 
flot used, in addition to smaller helicopters, the Mi- 10 flying crane, 
a twin- turbine aircraft with a lifting capacity of 11,000 to 14,000 
kilograms, depending on the engines. Hauling of heavy cargo, in- 
cluding vehicles, was performed by the world's largest helicopter, 
the Mi-26. Its unusual eight-blade rotor enabled it to lift a maxi- 
mum payload of some twenty tons. 

In 1986 Aeroflot served over 3,600 population centers and had 
a route network, excluding overlapping routes, that extended 
1,156,000 kilometers, of which 185,000 kilometers were interna- 
tional routes. Aeroflot' s share of total freight transported by all 
means of transportation was only 0.01 percent, or 3,157,000 tons 
originated. Nevertheless, it carried 116.1 million passengers (almost 
19 percent of the total passenger-kilometers), of whom 3.4 million 
were on international flights. The disproportion between domes- 
tic and international air travel reflected not only foreign travel re- 
strictions imposed on Soviet citizens but underscored the importance 
of aircraft as an essential — sometimes the sole — link to remote cities, 
towns, and settlements. Thus, in 1986 Siberia, the Far North, and 
the Far East, although sparsely populated, accounted for 26 percent 
of Aeroflot 's cargo and passenger transport. 

Aeroflot also connected the Soviet Union with ninety-seven 
foreign countries; the main international hub was Moscow's 
Sheremetevo Airport. Other cities with international airports in- 
cluded Leningrad, Kiev, Minsk, Yerevan, Tashkent, Irkutsk, and 
Khabarovsk. 

Aeroflot' s domestic flights frequently have become harrowing 
experiences for both Western and Soviet passengers, who have com- 
plained of long waits and indifferent service at ticket offices, seem- 
ingly interminable waiting at airport terminals poorly equipped 
with food and toilet facilities, passengers forced to sit in hot air- 
plane cabins without air conditioning, and indifferent cabin crews. 
Shortages of fuel and spare parts were among the major causes of 



578 



Transportation and Communications 

after the highway and railroad systems in terms of passenger- 
kilometers. Although it transported only a small fraction of the cargo 
shipped on the other modes of transportation, Aeroflot was the 
preferred carrier where speed was essential. Aeroflot provided many 
services not performed by Western airlines, such as the spraying 
of fertilizers and pesticides over fields and forests, forest fire de- 
tection and control, pipeline inspection, medical evacuation, logisti- 
cal support for oil and other exploration and extraction ventures, 
construction projects, and scientific expeditions to polar regions. 
Frequently, Aeroflot airplanes or helicopters were the sole means 
of reaching remote Siberian or northern settlements. Lastly, Aero- 
flot 's crews and aircraft constituted the strategic air transport reserve 
of the Soviet armed forces. 

Postwar Evolution of Aeroflot 

During World War II, Soviet civil aviation was infused with new 
technology, consisting of transport airplanes, such as the Ameri- 
can DC-3 and DC-4, supplied under the lend-lease agreement. 
As a result, Aeroflot experienced rapid growth in the postwar years. 
Between 1950 and 1955, a major route expansion occurred when 
the capitals of the constituent republics and major administrative 
centers were interconnected by air service. By 1955 the Soviet Union 
had established air links with neighboring communist countries in 
Europe and Asia. 

Aeroflot entered the jet age in 1956, when it put into service the 
world's first jet airliner, the twin-engined Tu-104. It carried seventy 
passengers or twelve tons of cargo at a range of up to 4,000 kilo- 
meters. Other jet or turboprop aircraft were soon acquired by Aero- 
flot: the An- 10, 11-18, and Tu-114 turboprops; the short-range 
Yak-40; the medium-range Tu-134A; the medium- to long-range 
Tu-154; and the long-range I1-62M jet liners. 

Aeroflot Operations 

In the mid- and late 1980s, Aeroflot operated a diversified fleet 
of both jet and turboprop aircraft, designed for either cargo or pas- 
sengers and adapted to the geographic and climatic conditions of 
the country and to its economic needs. Many of the aircraft had 
raised wings to operate from unimproved airstrips, including frozen 
marshes or Arctic ice floes, and capable of lifting tall, wide, and 
heavy vehicles, including medium and heavy tanks (see table 46, 
Appendix A). 

For tasks other than conventional passenger and cargo trans- 
portation, Aeroflot had available many types of general and special- 
purpose fixed and rotary- wing aircraft. For geological, weather, 



579 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

delayed or canceled flights. According to the head of the Ministry 
of Civil Aviation's Main Administration for Aviation Work and 
Transport Operations, a shortage of fuel was expected to keep at 
least 15 million people from flying on Aeroflot in 1988. 

The close relationship between Aeroflot and the Soviet armed 
forces was underscored by the fact that the minister of civil avia- 
tion has been a high-ranking general or marshal of the Air Forces. 
Aeroflot pilots held reserve commissions in the Air Forces. The 
1,600 medium- and long-range passenger and cargo aircraft of 
Aeroflot were also part of the strategic air transport reserve, ready 
to provide immediate airlift support to the armed forces. Indeed, 
many aircraft in Aeroflot 's inventory were of the same basic de- 
sign as military aircraft and, even when loaded with bulky cargo 
and vehicles, were capable of operating from unimproved fields. 
They were characterized by high wings, low fuselages with cargo/ 
vehicle loading ramps, and landing gear suitable for unimproved 
or marshy terrain. Short-range airplanes and helicopters were avail- 
able for appropriate military support missions. Civil aviation also 
served as a cover for military operations. According to a Western 
authority, military aircraft belonging to the Military Transport Avi- 
ation (Voennaia transportnaia aviatsiia) have been painted in Aero- 
flot colors for use as food relief and arms or personnel transports 
to foreign countries. 

Pipelines 

Although oil pipelines were first laid in Baku in 1872, the use 
of pipelines to move liquids and gases over long distances was es- 
sentially a post- World War II development, with most use occur- 
ring since 1970. In 1988 about 95 percent of crude oil and over 
20 percent of refined petroleum products, as well as nearly 100 per- 
cent of natural gas, were shipped by pipeline. In 1986 almost 653 
million tons originated of crude oil and refined petroleum products 
were transported by a large-diameter pipeline network of 81,500 
kilometers. About 616 billion cubic meters of natural gas entered 
the 185,000-kilometer gas pipeline system in 1986. Other products 
shipped by pipelines included chemicals, petrochemicals, salts, coal, 
ores, and construction minerals. 

The main oil pipelines were relatively new and of large 
diameter — 1,020 and 1,220 millimeters. About 65 percent of the 
oil pipelines, however, were of medium diameter — 530 and 820 
millimeters or smaller. They linked oilfields with refineries, and 
in turn the refineries were linked with main user areas or export 
outlets, such as the port of Ventspils on the Baltic or the towns 



580 



Moscow's Central Telegraph Office, decorated for the seventy-second 

anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution 
Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 

of Brest (near the border with Poland) and Uzhgorod (near the 
borders with Czechoslovakia and Hungary). 

The major gas pipelines ran from the principal natural gas 
producing regions of Central Asia, western Siberia (twelve large- 
diameter lines), and the Volga-Ural, Baku, and North Caucasus 
regions to major domestic and foreign industrial zones (see fig. 22). 
Natural gas pipelines were of 1,420 millimeter, 1,220 millimeter, 
1,020 millimeter, and smaller diameters, the latter representing 
just over half the total length. 

Among the better known pipelines were the Northern Lights line 
from the Komi petroleum deposit to Brest on the Polish border, 
the Soiuz line running from Orenburg to Uzhgorod near the 
Czechoslovak and Hungarian borders, and the Export pipeline from 
the Urengoy gas field to L'vov and thence to West European coun- 
tries, including Austria, Italy, West Germany, France, Belgium, 
and the Netherlands. The 1,420-millimeter Export pipeline was 
4,451 kilometers long. It crossed the Ural and Carpathian moun- 
tains and almost 600 rivers, including the Ob', Volga, Don, and 
Dnepr. It had forty-one compressor stations and a yearly capacity 
of 32 billion cubic meters of natural gas. 



581 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Communications 

Communications systems were controlled by the regime and were 
primarily used by it to convey decisions and to facilitate the exe- 
cution of directives affecting the economy, national security, and 
administrative governmental functions. The Ministry of Com- 
munications, a union-republic ministry (see Glossary), was 
responsible for radio, telegraph and telephone transmissions, com- 
munications satellites, and the postal service. Several other gov- 
ernmental organizations were concerned with communications, 
including the State Committee for Television and Radio Broad- 
casting, the Ministry of Defense (for military communications), 
the Ministry of Culture (for educational broadcasts), and others 
that controlled and operated electronic communications for their 
own needs. Communications organizations were also on the repub- 
lic and lower administrative levels. 

Electronic communications systems in the Soviet Union, espe- 
cially radio and television broadcasting, experienced a rapid growth 
in the 1960s and 1970s (see Radio; Television and Video Cassette 
Recorders, ch. 9). Although telephone communications were also 
expanded in the same period, the rate was slower. By 1989 the 
Soviet Union had a powerful telecommunications system that sent 
radio, television, and telephone messages to almost any location 
in the world. 

In 1965 the Soviet Union launched the Molniia (Lightning) satel- 
lite communications system linking Moscow to remote towns and 
military installations in the northern parts of the country. The Mol- 
niia system, the world's first domestic satellite communications net- 
work, retransmitted radio and television broadcasts originating in 
Moscow. It was used as the initial back-up teleprinter link for the 
"hot line" between Moscow and Washington. The system also 
transmitted signals to spacecraft in the Soiuz, Saliut, and other space 
programs. The Molniia system employed several satellites follow- 
ing elliptical orbits and several ground stations that exchanged sig- 
nals with them as they came into range. 

In 1971 the Soviet Union launched Intersputnik, an international 
satellite communications network, with thirteen other member na- 
tions: Afghanistan, Bulgaria, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, the Demo- 
cratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea), East Germany, 
Hungary, Laos, Mongolia, the People's Democratic Republic of 
Yemen (South Yemen), Poland, Romania, and Vietnam. Algeria, 
Iraq, Libya, and Syria became members subsequently, and 
Nicaragua and Cambodia agreed to the construction of ground 
stations in 1986. Headquartered in Moscow and governed by a 



582 




Figure 22. Major Petroleum Deposits and Pipelines, 1982 



584 



Transportation and Communications 

board representing the member nations, Intersputnik employed 
Molniia communications satellites to link the telephone, telegraph, 
television, and radio systems of member nations. Each member 
nation was responsible for building and operating its own ground 
station, and the Soviet Union had two dedicated stations — at 
Vladimir and Dubna. Intersputnik participants used centrally lo- 
cated ground stations to relay communications when they did not 
have direct access to the same satellite. 

Communications satellites in geostationary orbits, i.e., the satel- 
lite's position remained fixed relative to a point on the earth, were 
first launched by the Soviet Union in 1975. In 1985 the geosta- 
tionary, or Statsionar, system employed several different kinds 
of communications satellites, including the Raduga (Rainbow), 
Gorizont (Horizon), and Ekran (Screen). Since 1975 the Raduga 
satellites have been generally used to relay domestic message traffic 
between distant locations in the Soviet Union. They have also elec- 
tronically transferred the daily newspapers Pravda and Izvestiia from 
Moscow to Khabarovsk for same-day printing in the Soviet Far 
East. The Gorizont satellites' main functions have been interna- 
tional communications with ground stations, selecting global, 
regional, zone, or spot beams as needed. Several Gorizont satel- 
lites have relayed electronic versions of Pravda and Izvestiia to Irkutsk 
and Krasnoyarsk for printing and distribution. Some Western 
authorities considered Gorizont satellites capable of providing Soviet 
television programs inexpensively to Third World countries. Ekran 
satellites were used to relay radio and television signals to com- 
munity antenna systems in remote areas. 

The Ministry of Communications operated almost 92,000 post 
and telegraph offices and telephone exchanges, most of which were 
in rural locations. In 1986 it forwarded about 8.5 billion letters, 
50.3 billion newspapers and magazines, and 449 million telegrams. 
In addition, it processed 814 million money orders and pension 
payments. Despite constitutional guarantees of privacy of personal 
correspondence, telephone conversations, and telegraph commu- 
nications, in the late 1980s the regime continued to authorize ex- 
tensive eavesdropping. Domestic and international mail was subject 
to being opened and examined by government censors. Foreign 
publications "which may cause political and economic prejudice 
to the Soviet Union" were generally prohibited, and parcels from 
foreign addresses were routinely searched for a wide variety of pro- 
hibited articles, including consumer goods and food products, and 
were returned or "lost." 

Since the 1960s, the government has tried to expand and update 
the telephone system, which, by Western standards of availability 



585 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

and service, was woefully underdeveloped. In 1988 semiautomatic 
and automatic telephone exchanges were coming on line within 
urban centers, and direct long-distance dialing was expanding. To 
respond to a growing demand for better telecommunications, in 
the 1980s the Soviet Union turned to Western communications 
firms to acquire digital telephone switching equipment, for which 
the need was rapidly growing. 

At the end of 1986, an estimated 33 million telephones were con- 
nected with, or had access to, the Ministry of Communications 
network. However, the total number of telephone sets connected 
to Soviet networks was 39.5 million, which indicates that 6.5 mil- 
lion sets were on separate networks not belonging to the Ministry 
of Communications. Of the 33 million sets within the Ministry of 
Communications system, 27.7 million were on urban and 5.3 
million on rural networks. Furthermore, of this total, 18.5 million 
telephone sets were classified as residential, which meant not only 
sets in private residences but also ones located in communal areas, 
such as hallways of multifamily residences or in housing projects. 
Indeed, according to official Soviet data, only 28 percent of urban 
and 9.2 percent of rural families had telephones in 1986. In early 
1987, for instance, 13.3 million requests were made for installa- 
tions of telephones in cities alone. 

Other telecommunications systems, using both cable and micro- 
wave carriers for facsimile and data transmission systems, although 
under expansion by governmental authorities, still lagged behind 
the user demand for their services. User needs, however, deter- 
mined neither the availability nor the quality of communications 
services in the Soviet Union. Government planners, following direc- 
tives of the CPSU, allocated resources for communications and 
transportation with little reference to individual users. The regime 
gave precedence to the communications needs of decision makers 
and to the transportation needs of the national economy. Thus, 
it favored development of railroads, which served as the major long- 
distance transporter of freight. It also emphasized pipelines, as well 
as the maritime and air fleets, all of which grew substantially dur- 
ing the 1970s and 1980s. In contrast, the regime limited develop- 
ment of private automobiles and maintained a road network that 
primarily served areas with substantial industry and urban popu- 
lations. 

* * * 

The overall Soviet transportation system is analyzed by Holland 
Hunter and Vladimir Kontorovich in "Transport Pressures and 



586 



Transportation and Communications 



Potentials." A detailed study of the transportation of extracted 
energy resources by rail, water, and pipeline can be found in Mat- 
thew J. Sagers and Milford B. Green's The Transportation of Soviet 
Energy Resources. A brief but useful transportation overview is also 
found in J. P. Cole's Geography of the Soviet Union. An insight into 
Soviet urban transportation services is provided in Paul M. White's 
Planning of Urban Transport Systems in the Soviet Union. Holland Hunter 
and Deborah Kaple's The Soviet Railroad Situation assesses railroad 
operations, and Soviet and East European Transport Problems, edited 
by John Ambler, Denis Shaw, and Leslie Symans, treats Soviet 
railroads within the East European context. For current reporting 
on Soviet railroad developments, the following trade publications 
may be consulted: Rail International, Railway Gazette International, and 
International Railway Journal. For a comprehensive summary of Soviet 
railroads including operating statistics, locomotives and rolling 
stock, trackage, new construction, and technical data and charac- 
teristics, the latest yearbook of Jane's Railway Systems is an excel- 
lent source. A useful evaluation of rural trucking problems is in 
Judith Flynn and Barbara Severin's "Soviet Agricultural Trans- 
port," as well as in Elizabeth M. Clayton's "Soviet Rural Roads." 
D.M. Long's The Soviet Merchant Fleet is a good work to consult on 
the state of Morflot. Useful background material on the Soviet civil 
airline from its inception to its maturity can be found in Hugh Mac- 
Donald's Aeroflot. For Aeroflot operations in the 1980s, including 
service, flight crew proficiency, accidents, and handling of hijack- 
ings, the two-part article by Michael York, "Flying with Aeroflot," 
is helpful. For information about aircraft, the latest Jane's All the 
World's Aircraft should be consulted. (For further information and 
complete citations, see Bibliography.) 



587 



Chapter 15. Foreign Trade 




A merchant ship being loaded in a Soviet 



TRADE HAS TRADITIONALLY played only a minor role in 
the Soviet economy. In 1985, for example, exports and imports 
each accounted for only 4 percent of the Soviet gross national 
product. The Soviet Union maintained this low level because it 
could draw upon a large energy and raw material base and be- 
cause it historically had pursued a policy of self-sufficiency. Other 
foreign economic activity included economic aid programs, which 
primarily benefited the less developed Council for Mutual Economic 
Assistance (Comecon) countries of Cuba, Mongolia, and Vietnam, 
and substantial borrowing from the West to supplement hard- 
currency (see Glossary) export earnings. 

The Soviet Union conducted the bulk of its foreign economic 
activities with communist countries, particularly those of Eastern 
Europe. In 1988 Soviet trade with socialist countries amounted to 
62 percent of total Soviet foreign trade. Between 1965 and 1988, 
trade with the Third World made up a steady 10 to 15 percent 
of the Soviet Union's foreign trade. Trade with the industrialized 
West, especially the United States, fluctuated, influenced by po- 
litical relations between East and West, as well as by the Soviet 
Union's short-term needs. In the 1970s, during the period of de- 
tente, trade with the West gained in importance at the expense of 
trade with socialist countries. In the early and mid-1980s, when 
relations between the superpowers were poor, however, Soviet trade 
with the West decreased in favor of increased integration with 
Eastern Europe. 

The manner in which the Soviet Union transacted trade varied 
from one trade partner to another. Soviet trade with the Western 
industrialized countries, except Finland, and most Third World 
countries was conducted with hard currency, that is, currency that 
was freely convertible. Because the ruble was not freely converti- 
ble, the Soviet Union could only acquire hard currency by selling 
Soviet goods or gold on the world market for hard currency. There- 
fore, the volume of imports from countries using convertible cur- 
rency depended on the amount of goods the Soviet Union exported 
for hard currency. Alternative methods of cooperation, such as 
barter, counter trade, industrial cooperation, or bilateral clearing 
agreements were much preferred. These methods were used in 
transactions with Finland, members of the Comecon, China, Yugo- 
slavia, and a number of Third World countries. 



591 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Commodity composition of Soviet trade differed by region. The 
Soviet Union imported manufactured, agricultural, and consumer 
goods from socialist countries in exchange for energy and manufac- 
tured goods. The Soviet Union earned hard currency by export- 
ing fuels and other primary products to the industrialized West 
and then used this currency to buy sophisticated manufactures and 
agricultural products, primarily grain. Trade with the Third World 
usually involved exchanging machinery and armaments for tropi- 
cal foodstuffs and raw materials. 

Soviet aid programs expanded steadily from 1965 to 1985. In 
1985 the Soviet Union provided an estimated US$6.9 billion to 
the Third World in the form of direct cash, credit disbursements, 
or trade subsidies. The communist Third World, primarily Cuba, 
Mongolia, and Vietnam, received 85 percent of these funds. In 
the late 1980s, the Soviet Union reassessed its aid programs. In 
light of reduced political returns and domestic economic problems, 
the Soviet Union could ill afford ineffective disbursements of its 
limited resources. Moreover, dissatisfied with Soviet economic as- 
sistance, several Soviet client states opened trade discussions with 
Western countries. 

In the 1980s, the Soviet Union needed considerable sums of hard 
currency to pay for food and capital goods imports and to support 
client states. What the country could not earn from exports or gold 
sales it borrowed through its banks in London, Frankfurt, Vienna, 
Paris, and Luxembourg. Large grain imports pushed the Soviet 
debt quite high in 1981 . Better harvests and lower import require- 
ments redressed this imbalance in subsequent years. By late 1985, 
however, a decrease in oil revenues nearly returned the Soviet debt 
to its 1981 level. At the end of that same year the Soviet Union 
owed US$31 billion (gross) to Western creditors, mostly commer- 
cial banks and other private sources. 

In the late 1980s, the Soviet Union attempted to reduce its hard- 
currency debt by decreasing imports from the West and increas- 
ing oil and gas exports to the West. It also sought increased 
participation in international markets and organizations. In 1987 
the Soviet Union formally requested observer status in the Gen- 
eral Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and in 1988 signed a nor- 
malization agreement with the European Economic Community. 
Structural changes in the foreign trade bureaucracy, granting direct 
trading rights to select enterprises, and legislation establishing joint 
ventures with foreigners opened up the economy to the Western 
technical and managerial expertise necessary to achieve the goals 
established by General Secretary Mikhail S. Gorbachev's program 
of economic restructuring (perestroika — see Glossary). 



592 



Foreign Trade 



Development of the State Monopoly on Foreign Trade 

The government of the Soviet Union has always held a monop- 
oly on all foreign trade activity, but only after the death of Joseph V. 
Stalin in 1953 did the government accord importance to foreign 
trade activities. Before that time, the Bolsheviks' (see Glossary) 
ideological opposition to external economic control, their refusal 
to pay Russia's World War I debts, and the chaos of the Civil War 
(1918-21) kept trade to the minimum level required for the coun- 
try's industrial development (see Revolutions and Civil War, 
ch. 2). Active Soviet trade operations began only in 1921, when 
the government established the People's Commissariat of Foreign 
Trade. 

The commissariat's monopoly on internal and external foreign 
trade was loosened, beginning in 1921, when the New Economic 
Policy (NEP) decentralized control of the economy (see The Era 
of the New Economic Policy, ch. 2). Although the commissariat 
remained the controlling center, the regime established other or- 
ganizations to deal directly with foreign partners in the buying and 
selling of goods. These organizations included state import and ex- 
port offices, joint stock companies, specialized import and export 
corporations, trusts, syndicates, cooperative organizations, and 
mixed-ownership companies. 

The end of the NEP period, the beginning of the First Five- Year 
Plan (1928-32), and the forced collectivization of agriculture be- 
ginning in 1929 marked the early Stalin era (see Stalin's Rise to 
Power, ch. 2). The government restructured foreign trade opera- 
tions according to Decree Number 358, issued in February 1930, 
which eliminated the decentralized, essentially private, trading prac- 
tices of the NEP period and established a system of monopoly 
specialization. The government then organized a number of for- 
eign trade corporations under the People's Commissariat of Foreign 
Trade, each with a monopoly over a specific group of commodities. 

Stalin's policy restricted trade as it attempted to build socialism 
in one country. Stalin feared the unpredictable movement and dis- 
ruptive influence of such foreign market forces as demand and price 
fluctuations. Imports were restricted to factory equipment essen- 
tial for the industrialization drive that began with the First Five- 
Year Plan. 

World War II virtually halted Soviet trade and the activity of 
most foreign trade corporations. Trade was conducted primarily 
through Soviet trade representatives in Britain and Iran and the 
Soviet Buying Commission in the United States. After the war, 
Britain and other West European countries and the United States 



593 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

imposed drastic restrictions on trade with the Soviet Union. Thus, 
Soviet foreign trade corporations limited their efforts to Eastern 
Europe and China, establishing Soviet-owned companies in these 
countries and setting up joint-stock companies on very favorable 
terms. Comecon, founded in 1949, united the economies of Eastern 
Europe with that of the Soviet Union (see Appendix B). 

Soviet trade changed considerably in the post-Stalin era. Post- 
war industrialization and an expansion of foreign trade resulted 
in the proliferation of all-union (see Glossary) foreign trade organi- 
zations (FTOs), the new name for foreign trade corporations and 
also known as foreign trade association. In 1946 the People's Com- 
missariat of Foreign Trade was reorganized into the Ministry of 
Foreign Trade. The Ministry of Foreign Trade, through its FTOs, 
retained the exclusive right to negotiate and sign contracts with 
foreigners and to draft foreign trade plans. The State Committee 
for Foreign Economic Relations (Gosudarstvennyi komitet po 
vneshnim ekonomicheskim sviaziam — GKES), created in 1955, 
managed all foreign aid programs and the export of complete fac- 
tories through the FTOs subordinate to it. Certain ministries, 
however, had the right to deal directiy with foreign partners through 
their own FTOs. 

On January 17, 1988, Izvestiia reported the abolition of the Minis- 
try of Foreign Trade and GKES. These two organizations were 
merged into the newly created Ministry of Foreign Economic Re- 
lations, which had responsibility for administering foreign trade 
policy and foreign aid agreements. Other legislation provided for 
the establishment of joint enterprises. The government retained 
its monopoly on foreign trade through a streamlined version of the 
Soviet foreign trade bureaucracy as it existed before the January 
17 decree. 

Structure of the Foreign Trade Bureaucracy 

In 1988 the foreign trade bureaucracy reflected the monopoly 
specification system created by the 1930 Decree Number 358. the 
authority of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) 
and the Council of Ministers, six central bodies, the Ministry 
of Foreign Economic Relations, and numerous FTOs together 
planned, regulated, monitored, and carried out all Soviet foreign 
economic activity (see fig. 23). 

Administration 

Although the CPSU had ultimate authority over all foreign eco- 
nomic activity, in the late 1980s administrative control was cen- 
tralized in the Council of Ministers. More specifically, the council's 



594 



Foreign Trade 



State Foreign Economic Commission coordinated the activities of 
ministries and departments in the area of economic and scientific 
cooperation with socialist, developing, and developed capitalist 
states. 

Six central bodies under the Council of Ministries played impor- 
tant roles in foreign economic relations. The import and export of 
goods, services, and resources were managed by the State Planning 
Committee (Gosudarstvennyi planovyi komitet — Gosplan), the State 
Committee for Material and Technical Supply (Gosudarstvennyi 
komitet po material' no- tekhnicheskomu snabzheniiu — Gossnab), and 
the State Committee for Science and Technology (Gosudarstvennyi 
komitet po nauke i tekhnike — GKNT). Gosplan formulated all im- 
port and export plans, coordinated the allocation of investment and 
other resources, and had final authority over all decisions concern- 
ing foreign trade, including trade levels and commodity composi- 
tion. Gossnab coordinated the allocation of resources not handled 
by Gosplan and, as the central agency responsible for matching sup- 
plies with customers, played a major role in selecting and allocat- 
ing imports. GKNT negotiated technical cooperation agreements 
and monitored license and patent purchases and sales in order to 
introduce new technology into the Soviet economy. 

The State Committee on Prices (Gosudarstvennyi komitet po 
tsenam — Goskomtsen), the Ministry of Finance, and the State Bank 
(Gosudarstvennyi bank — Gosbank) held jurisdiction over the 
financing of foreign trade. Goskomtsen established prices for all 
imports and some exports. The Ministry of Finance controlled the 
balance of payments (see Glossary) and monitored the impact of 
foreign trade on the state budget. Finally, Gosbank set the exchange 
rate for the ruble (for value of the ruble — see Glossary) and man- 
aged the system of exchange within the Soviet Union. Gosbank 
supervised the Foreign Economic Activity Bank (Vneshnii 
ekonomicheskii bank — Vneshekonombank; until January 1, 1988, 
known as the Foreign Trade Bank), which provided international 
banking services for Soviet FTOs. 

Operation 

Until 1988 the two operative bodies involved solely and directly 
in foreign economic operations were GKES and the Ministry of 
Foreign Trade (see fig. 24). The Ministry of Foreign Trade for- 
mulated draft import and export plans and regulated commodity 
trade. GKES supervised foreign aid programs and the export of 
complete plants. The Ministry of Foreign Trade or GKES had juris- 
diction over most FTOs, which negotiated and signed commer- 
cial contracts with foreigners on behalf of individual enterprises 



595 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



COMMUNIST PARTY 
OF THE 
SOVIET UNION 



PRESIDIUM 



COUNCIL OF 
MINISTERS 



STATE FOREIGN 
ECONOMIC 
COMMISSION 



MANAGEMENT AGENCIES 



U 



STATE COMMITTEES 



PLANNING (GOSPLAN) 



MATERIAL AND TECHNICAL 
SUPPLY (GOSSNAB) 



SCIENCE AND 
TECHNOLOGY (GKNT) 



PRICES 
(GOSKOMTSEN) 



FINANCIAL AGENCIES 



— | MINI 



STRY OF FINANCE 



STATE BANK (GOSBANK) 



u 



FOREIGN ECONOMIC 

ACTIVITY BANK 
(VNESHEKONOMBANK) 



MINISTRY 
OF FOREIGN 
ECONOMIC 
RELATIONS 



OTHER 
MINISTRIES 

(13) 



OTHER AGENCIES 

(6) 



FOREIGN TRADE 
ORGANIZATIONS 

(57) 



FOREIGN TRADE 
ORGANIZATIONS 



FOREIGN TRADE 
ORGANIZATIONS 



' Urttil January 1988, known as the Foreign Trade Bank (Vneshtorgbank). 

^Organized in January 1988 by the merging of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and the State 
Committee for Foreign Economic Relations (GKES). 



Source: Based on information from United States, Central Intelligence Agency, Directorate 
of Intelligence, Directory of Soviet Officials: National Organizations, Washington, 1988; 
and H. Stephen Gardner, Soviet Foreign Trade, Boston, 1983, 3. 



Figure 23. Foreign Trade Bureaucracy, 1988 

(see Glossary). FTOs were generally organized by product, as had 
been the foreign trade corporations of the 1930s. 

Some industrial ministries or other agencies, however, had their 
own FTOs. As of early 1987, for example, forty-eight FTOs were 
under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and nine 



596 



Foreign Trade 



under the GKES, whereas the Ministry of the Maritime Fleet, the 
Ministry of the Fishing Industry, and the Ministry of Trade, among 
others, had their own FTOs. In addition, certain other agencies 
had their own FTOs: the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, 
which handled international trade exhibitions; the State Commit- 
tee for Physical Culture and Sports; the Central Union of Cooper- 
atives; the State Committee for Publishing Houses, Printing Plants, 
and the Book Trade; the State Committee for Cinematography; 
and the State Committee for Science and Technology. 

Structural Reforms, 1986 to Mid-1988 

The cumbersome foreign trade bureaucracy contributed to a 
number of problems that hindered the efficiency and effectiveness 
of foreign trade. The lack of direct contact between Soviet enter- 
prises and their foreign customers or suppliers frustrated both parties 
by unnecessarily delaying contract negotiations and the specifica- 
tion of technical details. In a May 1986 interview with Izvestiia, 
the general director of the Ministry of Foreign Trade's All-Union 
Association for the Export and Import of Technical Equipment, 
Boris K. Pushkin, reported that after an enterprise submitted a 
request for a foreign item, two to three years were required before 
it was included in the import plan and funds were allocated for 
its purchase. In the interim, the needs of the enterprise had often 
changed. Pushkin stressed the need to free enterprises from un- 
necessary petty supervision and excessive regulation. 

Taking such problems into account, the Twenty- Seventh Party 
Congress in February-March 1986 declared that the party antici- 
pated a step-by-step restructuring of [the country's] foreign trade 
in order to make exports and imports more effective. In August 
of the same year, the CPSU Central Committee and the Council 
of Ministers adopted the decree ,"On Measures for Improving 
Management of External Economic Relations," which outlined 
drastic steps to change the structure of the foreign trade bu- 
reaucracy. 

Also in August 1986, the Council of Ministers' State Foreign 
Economic Commission became a permanent body within the coun- 
cil, giving more authority and visibility to the commission, the 
domestic activities of which previously went largely unreported. 
The staff was augmented, and the chairman acquired a rank equiva- 
lent to that of deputy prime minister. The new charter stated that 
the commission's role was "to formulate and implement the coun- 
try's foreign economic strategy so as to enhance its potential con- 
tributions to acceleration [uskorenie — see Glossary], strengthen the 
Soviet position in the world economy, and promote structured and 



597 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Y OF 
TRADE 




2 


u 




LEG 


INI 

REI 




_i 
O 


so 




o 


Li. 








598 



Foreign Trade 



organized development of economic cooperation with all groups 
of countries." 

Until 1987 the forty-eight FTOs subordinate to the Ministry of 
Foreign Trade administered more than 90 percent of Soviet for- 
eign trade turnover. In 1987 the ministry lost control of 20 per- 
cent of Soviet foreign trade turnover. The government granted 
direct foreign trade rights to twenty-one ministries and state com- 
mittees, sixty-seven industrial enterprises, and eight interbranch 
scientific production complexes. Exporting enterprises gained the 
right to retain part of their hard-currency earnings. Each ministry 
or enterprise was to pay for its investment imports with its own 
hard currency, and the heads of ministries and enterprises became 
personally responsible for the efficient use of hard-currency funds. 
These measures gave enterprises more influence in import deci- 
sion making. 

On January 13, 1987, the Council of Ministers adopted the reso- 
lution "On Questions Concerning the Creation, on U.S.S.R. Ter- 
ritory, and the Activities of Joint Enterprises, International 
Associations, and Organizations with the Participation of Soviet 
and Foreign Organizations, Firms, and Management Bodies," or, 
more simply, a law on joint ventures. This legislation opened up 
enterprises inside the Soviet Union for the first time since the Bolshe- 
vik Revolution (see Glossary), to foreign participation. Joint ven- 
tures were to facilitate the acquisition and assimilation of Western 
technology, managerial know-how, and marketing abilities. Op- 
timistic about the economic effects of their new undertaking, Soviet 
officials declared that 85 to 90 percent of "the most important types 
of machinery" would meet world technical standards by 1990. The 
Soviet Union's vast natural resources and its lucrative, previously 
closed, domestic market attracted Western companies. By August 
1988, more than 50 joint ventures were registered in the Soviet 
Union, and approximately 300 were under negotiation. 

Nevertheless, numerous obstacles arose in the first eighteen 
months after the government adopted the joint venture law. Com- 
plaints by Western partners dealt with uncertainties concerning 
Soviet trade regulations, problems with the supply of goods, the 
dilemma of the nonconvertibility of the ruble, difficulties finding 
qualified Soviet managers, problems in projecting production costs 
(as of 1989 Soviet domestic prices were administratively set and 
not based on market forces), and even complications finding office 
space in Moscow. Soviet trade officials' efforts to accommodate 
these complaints have included the decentralization of the foreign 
trade bureaucracy, the establishment of a management institute 
in Moscow, price reforms, and various legal reforms. 



599 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Before Western businessmen could recover from the confusion 
and disruption caused by this series of reforms, a second series began 
in early 1988. Effective January 1, 1988, the Foreign Trade Bank 
(Vneshnii torgovii bank — Vneshtorgbank) was renamed the For- 
eign Economic Activity Bank (Vneshnii ekonomicheskii bank — 
Vneshekonombank). The name change did not signify a major 
change in the bank's duties but simply more accurately reflected 
the nature of its operations. Vneshtorgbank had branched out from 
the simple management of foreign trade transactions to provide 
currency, credit, and accounting services as well. In a change from 
its previous duties, Vneshekonombank was required to administer 
new procedures dealing with Soviet firms that had recently acquired 
direct foreign trade rights. 

Also on January 1, 1988, the New Enterprise Law went into 
effect, making enterprises economically accountable for their own 
business operations by 1989. According to this law, the govern- 
ment had the power to disband unprofitable businesses, and each 
ministry and its subordinate enterprises gained the responsibil- 
ity for their own foreign trade activities. In addition, Gosplan, 
Gossnab, and GKNT relinquished some of their rights to allocate 
money and goods. Finally, the Ministry of Foreign Trade lost con- 
trol of 1 5 percent more of its foreign trade turnover when fourteen 
additional enterprises and four other ministries acquired direct for- 
eign trade rights. 

Yet probably the most significant change in the foreign trade 
mechanism occurred on January 17, 1988, when Izvestiia announced 
the abolition of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and the GKES. The 
Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations, headed by Konstantin 
F. Katushev, former head of the GKES, assumed the duties of the 
two agencies. ' 'Thus, the state monopoly on foreign trade and its 
state-wide aspects remains centralized," reported the Soviet for- 
eign trade monthly Vneshniaia torgovlia (Foreign Trade), "while oper- 
ational functions are continually being shifted to the business level." 
In March 1988, the journal reported that approximately 20 per- 
cent of foreign trade turnover was handled by the eighty-one firms 
that had been granted the right to deal directly with foreigners. 

Other reforms followed in April 1988, when the Central Com- 
mittee and the Council of Ministers agreed on a new charter for 
the Chamber of Commerce and Industry. In general, the cham- 
ber monitored foreign trade conducted outside the new Ministry 
of Foreign Economic Relations. In addition, the chamber assisted 
Soviet production enterprises in locating Western partners and 
learning foreign trade practices. 



600 



Foreign Trade 

Trade with Socialist Countries 

In the late 1980s, the Soviet Union traded with fourteen socialist 
countries. The political and economic relationships between the 
Soviet Union and these countries determine the four groups into 
which these countries can be divided: members of Comecon; Yugo- 
slavia; China; and the developing communist countries of Cam- 
bodia, Laos, and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North 
Korea). 

Business with socialist countries was conducted on a bilateral, 
country-by-country basis in which imports balanced exports. Soviet 
oil exports to these countries bought machinery and equipment and 
industrial consumer goods, as well as political support without the 
expenditure of freely convertible foreign currency. In addition, 
Soviet aid programs, which took the form of direct loans or trade 
subsidies, almost exclusively involved socialist countries. 

The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance 

The Soviet Union formed the Council for Mutual Economic As- 
sistance (Comecon) in 1949, in part to discourage the countries 
of Eastern Europe from participating in the Marshall Plan (see Glos- 
sary) and to countereact trade boycotts imposed after World War 
II by the United States and by Britain and other West European 
countries. Ostensibly, Comecon was organized to coordinate eco- 
nomic and technical cooperation between the Soviet Union and 
the member countries. In reality, the Soviet Union's domination 
over Comecon activities reflected its economic, political, and mili- 
tary power. In 1989 Comecon comprised ten countries: the six 
original members — Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, 
Romania, and the Soviet Union — plus the German Democratic 
Republic (East Germany, which joined in 1950), Mongolia (1962), 
Cuba (1972), and Vietnam (1978). Albania, although it joined in 
February 1949, stopped participating in Comecon activities in 1961 
and formally withdrew in 1987. 

Since 1949 the Soviet Union has traded primarily with other 
Comecon members (see fig. 25). In 1960 the Soviet Union sent 
56 percent of its exports to and received 58 percent of its imports 
from Comecon members. From that time, the volume of this trade 
has steadily increased, but the proportion of Soviet trade with 
Comecon members decreased as the Soviet Union sought to in- 
crease trade with Western industrialized countries. In contrast to 
1960, trade with Comecon members accounted for only 42 per- 
cent of Soviet exports and 43 percent of Soviet imports in 1980. 

The European members of Comecon have looked to the Soviet 
Union for oil; in turn, they have provided machinery, equipment, 



601 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



PERCENT 

70-i 




1960 1970 1980 1987 

YEAR 

■ Comecon Countries 
^ Other Socialist Countries 
[Q Developed Western Countries 
Third World Countries 

Source: Based on information from Gosudarstvennyi komitet po statistike, Narodnoe khoziaistvo 
SSSR v 1987 g., Moscow, 1988. 

Figure 25. Composition of Foreign Trade, Selected Years, 1960-87 

agricultural goods, industrial goods, and consumer goods to the 
Soviet Union. Because of the peculiarities of the Comecon pricing 
system, throughout the 1970s and early 1980s Comecon prices for 
Soviet oil were lower than world oil prices. Western specialists have 
debated the political motivation of this implicit price subsidy to 
Comecon members. The cohesiveness within Comecon members 



602 



Foreign Trade 



seemed remarkable when in 1985 the fall in the world price left 
Comecon members paying above-market prices for Soviet oil. 

The membership of Cuba, Mongolia, and Vietnam in Comecon 
has served Soviet foreign policy interests more than the economic 
welfare of Comecon members. In general, the more economically 
developed European members have supported the three less devel- 
oped members by providing a large market for their exports, often 
at above-market prices. Most of Cuba's sugar and nickel and all 
of Mongolia's copper and molybdenum have been imported by 
the Soviet Union. In addition, the Soviet Union has established 
naval and air bases in Cuba and Vietnam. 

Since 1985 Gorbachev has called for an increase in trade with 
Comecon members. At the Twenty-Seventh Party Congress in 
February- March 1986, both he and Prime Minister Nikolai I. 
Ryzhkov stressed the need to improve cooperation with the socialist 
countries on the basis of Comecon 's Comprehensive Program for Scientific 
and Technical Cooperation to the Year 2000. This program stressed the 
self- sufficiency of Comecon countries in five key areas: electronics, 
automation of production, nuclear power, biotechnology, and de- 
velopment of new raw materials. It also called for improvement 
of plan coordination, joint planning, Comecon investment stra- 
tegy, production specialization, and quality of machinery and equip- 
ment exported to the Soviet Union (see Appendix B). 

Yugoslavia 

In 1964 Yugoslavia negotiated a formal agreement of coopera- 
tion with Comecon. This relationship allowed Yugoslavia to main- 
tain its nonaligned position while acquiring almost all the rights 
and privileges of a full Comecon member. In the 1980s, the Soviet 
Union's trade relationship with Yugoslavia resembled its relation- 
ship with full members of Comecon. The Soviet Union exported 
fuel, ferrous metals, plastics, and fertilizer to Yugoslavia. Yugo- 
slavia's machine-tool, power-engineering, shipbuilding, and con- 
sumer goods industries supplied the Soviet Union with soft-currency 
goods (see Glossary). 

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Yugoslavia became more de- 
pendent on Soviet oil as hostilities in the Persian Gulf cut off its 
supply of Iraqi oil. In addition, from 1970 well into the 1980s ac- 
tual trade with the Soviet Union exceeded planned trade volumes. 
Thus, in 1983 the Yugoslav government informed Soviet Prime 
Minister Nikolai A. Tikhonov of its desire to decrease trade with 
the Soviet Union in the mid- to late 1980s. Because of the huge 
foreign currency debt accumulated by Yugoslavia from 1981 to 
1985, however, the Soviet Union remained its most important trade 



603 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

partner in the late 1980s. In fact, for some Yugoslav products, such 
as shoes, the Soviet Union was the sole foreign buyer. 

China 

In the 1950s, the Soviet Union claimed half of China's foreign 
trade. The political rift that developed between the two countries 
in the late 1950s culminated in 1960 with the withdrawal of more 
than 1,000 Soviet specialists from China and an official break in 
trade relations in 1964. Although it had been only an observer, 
China stopped attending Comecon sessions in 1961. Economic 
relations between the Soviet Union and China resumed in 1982. 
Primarily as a result of Soviet political concessions and pressures 
on the Chinese to expand trade, trade volume between the two 
countries increased tenfold between 1982 and 1987. 

In the 1980s, the Soviet Union proved to be an ideal trade part- 
ner for China. China's exports were not competitive on the world 
market, and its foreign currency reserves were severely depleted 
by record foreign trade deficits in 1984 and 1985. Likewise, the 
Soviet Union, producing dated technology that was difficult to mar- 
ket in more industrially advanced countries and acquiring a growing 
hard-currency debt, eagerly pursued the Chinese market. Each 
country would sell the other goods it could not market elsewhere, 
and each could conserve scarce hard currency by bartering. The 
Soviet Union possessed machinery, equipment, and technical know- 
how to help China develop its fuel and mineral resources and power, 
transportation, and metallurgical industries. China could offer a 
wealth of raw materials, textiles, and agricultural and industrial 
consumer goods. 

Stepped-up economic relations reflected Soviet flexibility in over- 
coming various political and administrative stumbling blocks. By 
mid- 1988 Gorbachev was speaking of reducing Soviet troops on 
the Chinese border, Vietnam had removed half of its troops from 
Cambodia, and Soviet troops had begun their withdrawal from 
Afghanistan (see Sino-Soviet Relations, ch. 10). Reforms of the 
Soviet foreign trade complex established free trade zones (see Glos- 
sary) in the Soviet Far East and Soviet Central Asia, simplifying 
border trade between the two countries. Soviet trade officials per- 
suaded the Chinese to expand business ties beyond border trade 
into joint ventures, coproduction contracts, and the export of sur- 
plus Chinese labor to the Soviet Union. The Peking Restaurant 
in Moscow, specializing in Chinese cuisine, became the first joint 
venture between the Soviet Union and China. In April 1988, 
China's minister of foreign economic relations and trade, Zheng 
Toubin, stated that China would continue to expand trade with 



604 



Foreign Trade 



the Soviet Union "at a rapid pace," thus rewarding Soviet persis- 
tence in expanding trade with China. 

Cambodia, Laos, and North Korea 

Soviet economic relations with non-Comecon communist states 
have taken the form of aid and trade. In 1987 approximately 85 
percent of Soviet aid went to the communist Third World. By far 
the largest share of these funds was absorbed by Cuba, Mongolia, 
and Vietnam. The rest was left to Cambodia, Laos, and North 
Korea. Pledges of Soviet aid increased steadily from 1985 through 
1988 and were divided evenly between direct aid and trade subsi- 
dies. Commodity exchange was characterized by the Soviet Union's 
providing machinery, fuel, and transportation equipment in return 
for Laotian ores and concentrated metals, North Korean rolled fer- 
rous metals and labor, and Cambodian rubber. 

Trade with Western Industrialized Countries 

The Western industrialized countries include the countries of 
Western Europe, as well as Australia, Canada, Japan, New 
Zealand, South Africa, and the United States (see table 47, Ap- 
pendix A). Soviet trade with industrialized countries, except Fin- 
land, consisted of simple purchases paid for on a cash or credit basis, 
direct exchange of one good for another (Pepsi-Cola for Stolich- 
naya vodka, for example), or industrial cooperation agreements 
in which foreign firms participated in the construction or opera- 
tion of plants in the Soviet Union. In the latter instances, payments 
were rendered in the form of the output of new plants. By con- 
trast, trade with Finland, which does not have a convertible cur- 
rency, was conducted through bilateral clearing agreements, much 
like Soviet trade with its Comecon partners. 

In the 1970s and 1980s, the Soviet Union relied heavily on various 
kinds of fuel exports to earn hard currency, and Western partners 
regarded the Soviet Union as an extremely reliable supplier of oil 
and natural gas. In the 1980s, the Soviet Union gave domestic pri- 
ority to gas, coal, and nuclear power in order to free more oil 
reserves for export. This was necessary because of higher produc- 
tion costs and losses of convertible currency resulting from the drop 
in world oil prices. The development of natural gas for domestic 
and export use was also stimulated by these factors. Between 1970 
and 1986, natural gas exports rose from 1 percent to 15 percent 
of total Soviet exports to the West. 

Because of the inferior quality of Soviet goods, the Soviet Union 
was unsuccessful in increasing its exports of manufactured goods. 
In 1987 only 18 percent of Soviet manufactured goods met world 



605 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

technical standards. As an illustration of these problems in qual- 
ity, Canadian customers who had purchased Soviet Belarus trac- 
tors often found that the tractors had to be overhauled on arrival 
before they could be sold on the Canadian market. In 1986 less 
than 5 percent of Soviet exports to the West consisted of machinery. 
Other Soviet nonfuel exports in the 1990s included timber, exported 
primarily to Japan, and chemicals, the export of which grew sub- 
stantially in 1984 and 1985. 

In the 1980s, Soviet imports from Western industrialized coun- 
tries generally exceeded exports, although trade with the West 
decreased overall. One-half of Soviet agricultural imports were from 
developed countries, and these imports made up a considerable 
portion of total imports from the West. Industrial equipment formed 
one-quarter of Soviet imports from the West, and iron and steel 
products, particularly steel tubes for pipeline construction, made 
up most of the rest. Over the course of the 1980s, high-technology 
items gained in importance as well. 

In the 1970s and 1980s, Soviet trade with the Western industri- 
alized countries was more dynamic than was Soviet trade with other 
countries, as trade patterns fluctuated with political and economic 
changes. In the 1970s, the Soviet Union exchanged its energy and 
raw materials for Western capital goods, and growth in trade was 
substantial. Soviet exports jumped 55 percent, and imports jumped 
207 percent. The Soviet Union ran a trade deficit with the West 
throughout this period. 

In 1980 the Soviet Union exported slightly more to the West 
than it imported. After a temporary shortage of hard currency in 
1981, the Soviet Union sought to improve its trade position with 
the industrialized countries by keeping imports at a steady level 
and by increasing exports. As a result, the Soviet Union began 
to run trade surpluses with most of its Western partners. Much 
of the income earned from fuel exports to Western Europe was used 
to pay off debts with the United States, Canada, and Australia, 
from which the Soviet Union had imported large quantities of grain. 

In 1985 and 1986, trade with the West was suppressed because 
of heightened East- West political tensions, successful Soviet grain 
harvests, high Soviet oil production costs, a devalued United States 
dollar, and falling oil prices. Despite increases in oil and natural 
gas exports, the Soviet Union's primary hard-currency earners, 
the country was receiving less revenue from its exports to the West. 
The Soviet Union sold most of its oil and natural gas exports for 
United States dollars but bought most of its hard-currency imports 
from Western Europe. The lower value of the United States dol- 
lar meant that the purchasing power of a barrel of Soviet crude 



606 




oil, for example, was much lower than is the 1970s and early 1980s. 
In 1987 the purchasing power of a barrel of Soviet crude oil in ex- 
change for West German goods had fallen to one-third of its pur- 
chasing power in 1984. 

With the exception of grain, phosphates used in fertilizer produc- 
tion, and high-technology equipment, Soviet dependence on 
Western imports historically has been minimal. A growing hard- 
currency debt of US$31 billion in 1986 led to reductions in im- 
ports from countries with hard currencies. In 1988 Gorbachev 
cautioned against dependence on Western technology because it 
required hard currency that "we don't have." He also warned that 
increased borrowing to pay for imports from the West would lead 
to dependence on international lending institutions. 

The United States 

Trade between the United States and the Soviet Union aver- 
aged about 1 percent of total trade for both countries through 
the 1970s and 1980s. Soviet-American trade peaked in 1979 at 
US$4.5 billion, exactly 1 percent of total United States trade. 
The Soviet Union continuously ran a trade deficit with the United 
States in the 1970s and early 1980s, but from 1985 through 1987 
the Soviet Union cut imports from the United States while main- 
taining its level of exports to balance trade between the two coun- 
tries. 



607 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

In 1987 total trade between the United States and the Soviet 
Union amounted to US$2 billion. The Soviet Union exported chem- 
icals, metals (including gold), and petroleum products in addition 
to fur skins, alcoholic beverages, and fish products to the United 
States and received agricultural goods — mostly grain — and indus- 
trial equipment in return. The value of exports to the Soviet Union 
in 1987 amounted to US$1.5 billion, three-quarters of which con- 
sisted of agricultural products and one-quarter industrial equipment. 

Competition from other parts of the world, improvements in 
Soviet grain production, and political disagreements between the 
two countries adversely affected American agricultural exports to 
the Soviet Union in the 1980s. In 1985 and 1986, trade was the 
lowest since 1973. The Soviet Union had turned to Canada and 
Western Europe for one-third of its grain supplies, as well as to 
Argentina, Eastern Europe, Australia, and China. United States 
government price subsidies helped to expand grain exports in 1987 
and 1988. 

The United States has long linked trade with the Soviet Union 
to its foreign policy toward the Soviet Union and, especially since 
the early 1980s, to Soviet human rights policies (see table 48, Ap- 
pendix A). In 1949, for example, the Coordinating Committee for 
Multilateral Export Controls (CoCom — see Glossary) was estab- 
lished by Western governments to monitor the export of sensitive 
high technology that would improve military effectiveness of mem- 
bers of the Warsaw Pact (see Appendix C) and certain other coun- 
tries. The Jackson- Vanik Amendment, which was attached to the 
1974 Trade Reform Act, linked the granting of most-favored-nation 
status (see Glossary) to the right of Soviet Jews to emigrate. 

In 1987 the United States had reason to reassess its trade policy 
toward the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union had restructured and 
decentralized authority for trade under the Ministry of Foreign 
Trade, made improvements in human rights policies, cooperated 
in arms control negotiations, and shown a willingness to experi- 
ment with joint ventures. Furthermore, the United States govern- 
ment recognized that restrictive trade policies were hurting its own 
economic interests. In April 1988, Soviet and American trade dele- 
gations met in Moscow to discuss possibilities for expanded trade. 
Through increased trade with the United States, the Soviet Union 
hoped to learn Western management, marketing, and manufac- 
turing skills. Such skills would increase the ability of the Soviet 
Union to export manufactured goods, and thus earn hard currency, 
and would improve its competitiveness on the world market. The 
delegations declared that Soviet- American cooperation would be 



608 



American fast food served near Gor'kiy Park, Moscow 

Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 

expanded in the areas of food processing, energy, construction 
equipment, medical products, and the service sector. 

Western Europe 

In the mid-1980s, West European exports to the Soviet Union 
were marginal, less than 0.5 percent of the combined gross national 
product (GNP — see Glossary) of countries of the Organisation for 
Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD — see Glossary). 
OECD countries provided the Soviet Union with high-technology 
and industrial equipment, chemicals, metals, and agricultural 
products. In return, Western Europe received oil and natural gas 
from the Soviet Union. 

Although oil and gas were the primary Soviet exports to Western 
Europe, they represented only a small percentage of Western Eu- 
rope's substantial fuel imports: Soviet oil provided 3 percent and 
natural gas 2 percent of the energy consumed in Western Europe. 
The completion of the Urengoy-Uzhgorod export pipeline project 
increased the importance of Soviet natural gas to Western Europe 
in the second half of the 1980s. In 1984 France, Austria, the Fed- 
eral Republic of Germany (West Germany), and Italy began receiv- 
ing natural gas from western Siberia through the pipeline, for which 
the Soviet Union was paid in hard currency, pumping equipment, 



609 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

and large-diameter pipe. By 1990 the Soviet Union expected to 
supply 3 percent of all natural gas imported by Western Europe, 
including 30 percent of West Germany's gas imports. 

Unlike the United States, the countries of Western Europe have 
not viewed trade as a tool to influence Soviet domestic and foreign 
policies. Western Europe rejected the trade restrictions imposed 
by the United States after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 

1979 and the declaration of martial law in Poland in 1980. From 

1980 to 1982, the United States embargoed the supply of equip- 
ment for the Urengoy-Uzhgorod natural gas pipeline, but Western 
Europe ignored United States pleas to do the same. 

Despite the poor relations between the superpowers in the early 
and mid-1980s, Western Europe tried to improve international re- 
lations with the Soviet Union. One major step in this direction was 
the normalization of relations between Comecon and the European 
Economic Community (EEC). After fifteen years of negotiations, 
the EEC approved an accord that established formal relations with 
Comecon effective June 25, 1988. Although it did not establish 
bilateral trade relations, the agreement 4 'set the stage" for the ex- 
change of information. This accord marked Comecon 's official 
recognition of the EEC. 

Japan 

In 1985 trade with the Soviet Union accounted for 1.6 percent 
of Japanese exports and 1 percent of Japanese imports; Japan was 
the Soviet Union's fourth most important Western trading part- 
ner (see table 49, Appendix A). Japan's principal exports to the 
Soviet Union included steel (approximately 40 percent of Japan's 
exports to the Soviet Union), chemicals, and textiles. The Soviet 
Union exported timber, nonferrous metals, rare-earth metals, and 
fuel to Japan. In 1986, despite a reduction in trade between the 
two countries, the Soviet Union had a trade deficit with Japan. 
In 1987 trade dropped another 20 percent. 

Numerous controversies have thwarted Soviet-Japanese trade. 
The Toshiba affair, in which Japan was accused of shipping equip- 
ment to the Soviet Union that was prohibited by CoCom, caused 
Japanese-Soviet trade to decrease in 1987. In addition, the Japanese 
constantly prodded the Soviet Union to return the islands off the 
Japanese island of Hokkaido that had come under Soviet control 
after World War II (see Soviet-Japanese Relations, ch. 10). For 
its part, the Soviet Union complained of the trade imbalance and 
static structure of Japanese-Soviet trade. 

In the late 1980s, the Soviet Union tried to increase its exports 
to Japan and diversify the nature of the countries' relationship. 



610 



Foreign Trade 



Soviet proposals have included establishing joint enterprises to ex- 
ploit natural resources in Siberia and the Soviet Far East, specifi- 
cally, coal in the southern Yakutiya of Siberia and petroleum on 
Sakhalin; cooperating in the monetary and credit fields; jointly sur- 
veying and studying marine resources and peaceful uses of space; 
and establishing joint activities in other countries. The Soviet Union 
also proposed branching out into joint ventures in the chemical 
and wood chip industries, electronics, machine tools, and fish 
processing. The first Japanese-Soviet joint enterprise, a wood- 
processing plant in the Soviet Far East, began operation in March 
1988. The Soviet Union provided the raw materials, and Japan 
supplied the technology, equipment, and managerial expertise. 

Finland 

In contrast to the variable trade relationships the Soviet Union 
has had with other West European countries, its relationship with 
Finland has been somewhat stable because of five-year agreements 
that regulated trade between the countries. The first was estab- 
lished in 1947, and 1986 marked the beginning of the eighth. Ac- 
counting procedures and methods of payment were agreed upon 
every five years as well by the Bank of Finland and Vneshtorg- 
bank. A steady growth in trade between the two countries occurred 
throughout the 1970s and 1980s. 

In the late 1980s, Finland was the Soviet Union's second most 
important trading partner among the Western nations, after West 
Germany. Trade with Finland, however, was based on bilateral 
clearing agreements (see Glossary) rather than on exchange of hard 
currency used with other Western trading partners. In 1986 the 
Soviet Union shipped 4 percent of its exports to and received 3 
percent of its imports from Finland. Finland provided the Soviet 
Union with ships, particularly those suited to Arctic conditions; 
heavy machinery; and consumer goods such as clothing, textiles, 
processed foodstuffs, and consumer durables. The Soviet Union 
exported oil, natural gas, and fuel and technology for the nuclear 
power industry. 

The system of bilateral clearing agreements on which Soviet- 
Finnish trade was based required that any increase in Finnish im- 
ports from the Soviet Union be accompanied by a corresponding 
increase in exports to the Soviet Union in order to maintain the 
bilateral trade balance. At the beginning of the 1980s, Finland in- 
creased its imports of Soviet oil, which allowed it to increase its 
exports to the Soviet Union. This procedure accounted for the 
steady growth in Soviet-Finnish trade into the late 1980s. By 1988 
about 90 percent of Soviet exports to Finland consisted of oil. 



611 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Because the Finns imported more oil than they could consume 
domestically, they reexported it to other Scandinavian and West 
European countries. The Finns complained in late 1987 and early 
1988 of a decline in Soviet ship orders and delinquent payments. 
The share of Finland's exports to the Soviet Union, which had previ- 
ously been as high as 25 percent, dropped to 15 percent in 1988. 

Trade with Third World Countries 

The Third World embraces those countries the Soviet Union 
terms "developing countries." This category includes those coun- 
tries of socialist orientation that have some sort of privileged eco- 
nomic affiliation with the Soviet Union, such as Afghanistan, 
Angola, Iraq, and Nicaragua, but excludes the developing coun- 
tries ruled by Marxist- Leninist (see Glossary) parties, such as Cam- 
bodia, Laos, and Vietnam. Soviet trade with the Third World has 
been marked by two characteristics. First, although the Soviet 
Union has generally played only a minor role in Third World trade, 
Soviet imports or exports have formed a large portion of the total 
trade of some countries. Second, the Soviet Union has concentrated 
its trade with the Third World in the hands of relatively few part- 
ners. For example, in 1987 India, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Argentina, 
Egypt, Turkey, Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Malaysia together ac- 
counted for 75 percent of Soviet imports from and 80 percent of 
Soviet exports to the Third World. 

Although Soviet trade with the Third World increased in volume 
from 1965 through 1985, it remained between 13 and 15 percent 
of total Soviet trade for exports and 10 and 12 percent for imports. 
The Third World's trade with the Soviet Union, however, decreased 
in the 1970s and into the 1980s. These data include Cuba, since 
the only figures available concerning Third World trade with the 
Soviet Union include Cuba. As a percentage of overall Third World 
trade, the Soviet Union's share fell from 3.9 percent in 1970 to 
2.5 percent in 1981 . Deducting Soviet trade with Cuba, which has 
been considerable, would show an even smaller role played by the 
Soviet Union in Third World trade. In the late 1980s, the Soviet 
Union sought arrangements that would allow it to maintain a level 
of trade that minimized the loss of hard currency. 

Balance of Trade 

During the 1980s, the Soviet Union exported more to Third 
World countries than it imported from them. Official Soviet statis- 
tics showed a trade deficit for this period, but arms and military 
equipment sales, which were not reported and are thus termed 
"unidentifiable" exports, accounted for approximately 50 percent 



612 



Icebreaker Otto Schmidt, used to clear the way for cargo ships 

Courtesy United States Navy 

of total exports to the Third World throughout the 1980s. Thus, 
the Soviet Union's hard-currency balance of trade (see Glossary), 
including arms sales, with the Third World was positive from 1980 
through 1986. In fact, the Soviet Union's positive hard-currency 
trade balance with the Third World exceeded its hard-currency 
deficit with the Western industrialized countries in 1985 and 1986. 
For this reason, the Soviet Union showed an overall positive hard- 
currency trade balance for these years. 

Until the mid-1970s, bilateral clearing agreements were the 
primary means by which the Soviet Union settled accounts with 
its Third World partners. By the early 1980s, hard-currency pay- 
ments had become the preferred means of settlement. Clearing 
agreements were used in less than half of all trade transactions. 
On occasion, the Soviet Union bartered arms for oil. 

Composition of Trade 

Not including arms sales, machinery accounted for 20 percent 
of total sales to the Third World in 1985. Soviet exports of 
machinery took up an even higher relative share of total sales to 
Algeria, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, the People's Democratic Republic 
of Yemen (South Yemen), and Turkey. From 1980 through 1984, 
fuel, mostly oil, made up approximately 33 percent of overall Soviet 



613 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

exports to the Third World, including 50 percent of its exports to 
Asia and 60 to 70 percent of its exports to Latin America. Since 
1985 greater competition on the world market resulting from fall- 
ing world oil prices and rising Soviet extraction costs has prompted 
the Soviet Union to try to replace its export of oil with manufac- 
tured goods. 

The Soviet Union has been the largest arms exporter to the Third 
World for a number of years. Major arms customers were con- 
centrated in the belt of countries that stretches from North Africa 
to India, close to the Soviet Union's southern border. Some 72 
percent of Soviet weapons exports went to Algeria, India, Iraq, 
Libya, and Syria. Other important customers included Afghanistan, 
Angola, Ethiopia, South Yemen, and the Yemen Arab Republic 
(North Yemen). The Soviet Union lost arms customers in the 1980s, 
however, when Brazil and Egypt began to expand their arms sales 
to the Third World. India, which had experienced improvements 
in its hard-currency balance in the 1980s, also started to buy arms 
from other suppliers. In an effort to retain its share of Indian arms 
customers, the Soviet Union continued to offer India its most 
sophisticated weapons at even more attractive rates. 

The Soviet Union has long been an importer of Third World 
agricultural products. These imports increased dramatically after 
1980 because of poor Soviet harvests from 1979 into the early 1980s 
and the United States grain embargo against the Soviet Union in 
1980 and 1981. From 1980 to 1985, food and agricultural goods, 
half of them grain, made up 50 percent of Soviet imports from the 
Third World. In the first nine months of 1986, the decrease in grain 
purchases accounted for most of the 22 percent drop in imports 
from the Third World. 

Africa and Latin America supplied most of the food imports other 
than grain. Throughout the 1980s, food imports steadily rose, but 
imports from individual countries fluctuated. Because of these fluc- 
tuations, the Soviet Union was often considered an unstable trade 
partner compared with Western customers. 

Because the Soviet Union was a major producer and exporter 
of most of the world's minerals, its import requirements for many 
other commodities (nonferrous metals, in particular) were sporadic. 
Nonetheless, the Soviet Union was a stable importer of some min- 
erals, particularly bauxite and phosphate rock. The Soviet Union 
imported up to 50 percent of its bauxite from Guinea, Guyana, 
India, Indonesia, and Jamaica. Phosphate rock was abundant in 
the Soviet Union, but because extraction costs were high most of 
this mineral was imported from Morocco and Syria. 



614 



Foreign Trade 



A decline in Soviet imports of manufactured goods in the 1970s 
led Third World countries to pressure the Soviet Union to increase 
the import of these goods in the 1980s. In 1982 the Soviet demand 
for Third World manufactures began to rise. By 1984 manufac- 
tured goods, including manufactured consumer goods, made up 
25 percent of Soviet imports from the Third World. 

Beginning in 1973, in an effort to earn hard currency, the Soviet 
Union began to import oil from Third World countries for reex- 
port to Western industrialized countries. This activity slowed from 
1980 to 1982, recovered in 1983 through 1985, and continued to 
increase in 1986. Late that year, the Soviet Union signed an agree- 
ment with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries 
(OPEC) that restricted the amount of oil it could buy for reexport. 
By 1988 this agreement had not cut total Soviet oil receipts, 
however, because oil was paid to the Soviet Union as compensa- 
tion for arms sales. 

Africa, Asia, and Latin America 

During the 1980s, the geographical pattern of Soviet-Third World 
trade changed markedly (see table 50, Appendix A). A decrease 
in trade with North Africa and the Middle East balanced a sub- 
stantial increase in trade with sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and 
Latin America. 

In 1987 about 50 percent of the Soviet Union's total identified 
exports to the Third World went to Asia, and India was the Soviet 
Union's biggest trade partner. In exchange for Soviet oil and oil 
products, India supplied food, raw agricultural material, clothing, 
textiles, and machinery. India was also the Soviet Union's sole sig- 
nificant Third World supplier of equipment and advanced tech- 
nology, e.g., computers and copiers, much of which was produced 
by Indian subsidiaries of Western multinational corporations. 
Malaysia, another important partner of the Soviet Union in Asia, 
was an important supplier of rubber, palm oil, and tin. 

From 1980 to 1983, Soviet exports to Africa increased slightly 
to 30 percent of its Third World exports and decreased thereafter. 
Imports from Africa fluctuated from 1980 to 1985 but remained 
at about 25 percent. Nigeria was the Soviet Union's only impor- 
tant trade partner in sub-Saharan Africa, receiving Soviet ma- 
chinery and exporting cocoa. 

Exports to Latin America grew during the 1980s and reached 
8 percent in 1985. Latin America's share of Soviet Third World 
imports was high (40 percent in 1982) because of large imports of 
Argentine grain. As the Soviet Union's main grain supplier, 
Argentina was the Soviet Union's most significant import partner 



615 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



in the Third World in 1980, 1981, and 1983. In 1986 the Soviet 
Union renewed its grain agreement with Argentina for another five 
years. However, because of a US$11 billion trade deficit with 
Argentina that the Soviet Union had amassed from 1980 through 
1985 and the successful Soviet harvest of 1986, the Soviet Union 
cut its grain imports from Argentina drastically. In 1986 they were 
at a six-year low. 

Countries of Socialist Orientation 

The countries of socialist orientation can be categorized into two 
groups: those that had observer status in Comecon and those that 
were not observers but had privileged affiliations with Comecon 
member countries (see table 51 , Appendix A). The Soviet Union's 
trade with the Third World has always been heavily skewed toward 
countries of socialist orientation. Soviet aid provided most of the 
foreign capital for these countries and influenced their domestic 
economic development significantly. The Soviet Union often prof- 
ited more politically than economically from this trade: most Soviet 
surpluses were not repaid but became clearing credit, long-term 
cooperation credit, or short-term commercial credit. 

In 1986 the countries that had formal agreements with, or ob- 
server status in, Comecon were Afghanistan, Angola, Ethiopia, 
Laos, and South Yemen. These countries were all characterized 
by political instability, low GNP, and low export potential. The 
share of exports to this group rose from 1 4 percent of total Soviet 
identified exports to the Third World in 1980 to 28 percent in the 
first nine months of 1986. Afghanistan, a recipient of Soviet 
machinery and military equipment, was the Soviet Union's most 
significant partner in this group. By contrast, trade with South 
Yemen was negligible. 

Countries that had privileged affiliations with Comecon were 
Algeria, Benin, Burma, Congo, Guinea, Madagascar, Nigeria, 
Syria, and Tanzania and, at times, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Seychelles, 
and Zimbabwe. Throughout the 1980s, Soviet exports to these coun- 
tries oscillated, for example, from 27 percent in 1981 to 15 percent 
in 1983. This fluctuation, as well as fluctuations in imports, was 
primarily a result of changes in trade with Iraq, a major Soviet arms- 
for-oil trading partner in the Third World. 

Trade with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries 

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), 
particularly Iraq and Algeria, absorbed the largest share of the Soviet 
Union's "unidentified" exports (see table 52, Appendix A). 



616 



Loaded tanker Iman at sea 
Roll-on/roll-off ship, named for composer Nikolay Rimskiy-Korsakov 

Courtesy United States Navy 



617 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Although Soviet statistics usually showed a very low or negative 
trade balance with these countries, the balance was probably high 
because of arms sales. In the 1980s, some OPEC countries, par- 
ticularly Iran and Iraq, together with Syria, which was not a mem- 
ber of OPEC, exchanged oil for Soviet arms and military 
equipment. Oil from these countries was resold to the West for 
hard currency. In the late 1980s, the Soviet Union attempted to 
increase its exports of nonmilitary goods to these countries. In May 
1986, the Soviet Union and Iraq agreed to increase Soviet non- 
military equipment sales, and in August 1986 an attempt was made 
to revive Iraqi gas sales. 

Gorbachev's Economic Reforms 

When Gorbachev delivered his report on the CPSU's economic 
policy on June 12, 1985, he noted that growth in exports, particu- 
larly machinery and equipment, was slow because the poor qual- 
ity of Soviet goods prohibited them from being competitive on the 
world market. In the next three years, Gorbachev introduced many 
changes that would enable the foreign trade complex to better sup- 
port his economic policy of acceleration. By May 1988, the struc- 
ture of the Soviet foreign trade complex had been changed, and 
operations had been dramatically overhauled (see Structural Re- 
forms, 1986 to Mid-1988, this ch.). 

The price reform called for by the Twenty- Seventh Party Con- 
gress was an important step in improving Soviet international eco- 
nomic involvement. Soviet officials admitted that pricing was 
' 'economically unsubstantiated" and "unrealistic." They under- 
stood that although a fully convertible ruble would not be possible 
for some time, prices that more accurately reflected production costs, 
supply and demand, and world market prices were essential for 
developing a convertible currency. The nonconvertible ruble and 
the Soviet pricing system discouraged Western businessmen who 
could not accurately project production costs nor easily convert their 
ruble profits. 

The new joint venture law, passed on January 13, 1987, opened 
up the Soviet economy to foreign participation, particularly in 
manufacturing. It was believed that the experience gained in such 
ventures would facilitate integration into the world economy. Spe- 
cifically, through upgraded production processes, the Soviet Union 
could export more competitive manufactured goods and decrease 
its dependency on energy and raw materials to earn hard currency. 

In August 1987, the Soviet Union formally requested observer 
status in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT — 
see Glossary). The Soviet Union also expressed its desire to join 



618 



Foreign Trade 



other international economic organizations and establish contacts 
with other regional groups. A major step in this direction occurred 
in 1988 when the Soviet Union signed a normalization agreement 
with the EEC. The Soviet government, however, professed no in- 
terest in joining the World Bank (see Glossary) or the International 
Monetary Fund (IMF — see Glossary). Although Soviet officials 
claimed that the international monetary system "was not managed 
properly," it is more likely that IMF and World Bank regulations 
were the obstacles: both institutions required that members' cur- 
rencies be freely convertible and that members provide accurate 
information concerning gold sales and economic performance. 

Gorbachev transformed the role of foreign trade in the Soviet 
economy. Whereas imports previously were regarded exclusively 
as a vehicle to compensate for difficulties in the short term, Soviet 
economists under Gorbachev declared that imports should be 
regarded as alternatives to domestic investment and that exports 
should serve to gauge the technical level of domestic production. 
Foreign economic ties were to support growth in production be- 
yond the capacities of the domestic economy. The Soviet Union 
could thus take a place in the world market that was commensurate 
with its scientific and technical progress and political weight. 

* * * 

Numerous English-language sources cover aspects of Soviet for- 
eign trade. The foreign economic relations section of volume two 
of the report submitted to the United States Congress Joint Eco- 
nomic Committee in November 1987 entitled Gorbachev's Economic 
Plans is particularly informative on Soviet- American trade, the 
Soviet Union's debt situation, and Soviet economic involvement 
in the Third World. H. Stephen Gardner's Soviet Foreign Trade very 
clearly lays out the institutional and political foundations for Soviet 
foreign economic decision making through 1980. Two chapters, 
one by Wilfried Czerniejewicz and another by Kazuo Ogawa, in 
Siberia and the Soviet Far East describe trade relations between the 
Soviet Union and Western Europe and the Soviet Union and Japan. 
Although it is dated, Soviet Foreign Trade by Glen Alden Smith is 
one of the best references covering all aspects of Soviet trade. 

An accurate source of Soviet trade data is the Central Intelli- 
gence Agency's Handbook of Economic Statistics, published in Sep- 
tember of each year. Jerry F. Hough's Opening Up the Soviet Economy 
devotes one chapter to Gorbachev's foreign trade reforms and 
another to the way American businessmen and government offi- 
cials should view these changes. (For further information and com- 
plete citations, see Bibliography.) 



619 



Chapter 16. Science and Technology 



Montage of a nuclear reactor at the Ukrainian Academy of 
Sciences, a cosmonaut in a space suit, a woman operating a 
computer, and an industrial robot 



SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL progress has played a 
crucial role in the domestic and foreign relations of the Soviet Union 
and other modern, industrialized nations. New domestic develop- 
ments have promised to strengthen the Soviet economy, enhance 
military capabilities, and significantiy influence Soviet relations with 
other countries. 

The Soviet Union has placed great emphasis on science and tech- 
nology. Soviet leaders since Vladimir I. Lenin have stressed that 
the growth of science and technology is essential to overall economic 
expansion of the country. They have overseen the development 
of a massive network of research and development organizations 
that in the 1980s employed more scientists, engineers, and research- 
ers than any other nation. Their commitment also has been reflected 
in the annual increase in government funds allocated to science 
and technology and in the efforts made to incorporate science and 
mathematics courses in the school curriculum at all levels. In 1989 
Soviet scientists were among the world's best- trained specialists in 
several critical fields. 

The results of this commitment to science and technology have 
been mixed. In some areas, the Soviet Union has achieved nota- 
ble success. For example, in 1964 two Soviet scientists, Nikolai 
Basov and Aleksandr Prokhorov, shared a Nobel Prize, together 
with the American Charles H. Townes, for their research in de- 
veloping the laser. Soviet scientists also have excelled in space 
research. In 1957 they launched the first artificial earth satellite, 
Sputnik (see Glossary), and in 1989 they still held several records 
for longevity in space. Other strengths have included high-energy 
physics, selected areas of medicine, mathematics, and welding tech- 
nologies. And in some military-related technologies the Soviet 
Union has equaled or even surpassed Western levels. 

In other areas, the Soviet Union has been less successful. In 
chemistry, biology, and computers the Soviet Union in 1989 re- 
mained far behind the technological levels achieved in the West 
and in Japan. Research and development in industries producing 
consumer goods has received littie attention, and the goods produced 
in those industries have long been considered to be of extremely 
low quality by Western standards. 

This disparity in the achievements of Soviet technological de- 
velopment has resulted from a combination of historical, economic, 
planning, and organizational factors. All have combined to produce 



623 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

a system in which scientists and engineers have had little incentive 
to innovate because of immense bureaucratic obstacles and because 
of limited professional and personal rewards. 

In the 1980s, the problems of science and technology received 
considerable attention in the Soviet Union. Cognizant of their coun- 
try's serious economic shortcomings, leaders stressed the impor- 
tance of scientific and technological advances to end the Soviet 
Union's dependence on extensive economic development (see Glos- 
sary) and to move toward intensive development. In the middle 
of the decade, the new leadership began examining the problems 
of Soviet science and technology and launched numerous programs 
and reforms aimed at improving the country's research, develop- 
ment, and production processes. 

Early Development 

Soviet leaders since Lenin have stated as one of their long-term 
goals the development of a powerful scientific and technological 
base. Yet at various times since the Bolshevik Revolution (see Glos- 
sary) of 1917, Soviet leaders have faced situations in which the im- 
mediate economic, military, and political demands on science and 
technology outweighed the long-term goals. Thus, the pursuit of 
short-term objectives affected scientific and technological develop- 
ment at some times by retarding its expansion and at other times 
by laying the foundation for weaknesses that emerged later. Despite 
this, Soviet science and technology have grown immensely in terms 
of organizations, personnel, funding levels, and output. 

When the Bolsheviks (see Glossary) seized power in 1917, they 
inherited a poorly developed scientific and technological base. The 
major science organization at the time of the Bolshevik Revolu- 
tion was the Academy of Sciences, founded by Peter the Great in 
1725 in hopes of developing an indigenous science base and of 
eliminating his country's reliance on foreign science. Peter intended 
the academy to conduct research, serve as an advisory board to 
the tsar, and organize the empire's higher and secondary education. 

In its early years, the academy struggled to resolve such issues 
as defining its responsibilities and reducing the extensive govern- 
mental control over academy activities. Its second charter, issued 
in 1803, relieved the academy of its educational responsibilities and 
removed some governmental controls, particularly regarding mem- 
bership selection. The government continued to interfere in the 
work of scientists, however, particularly those who advocated 
progressive ideas that challenged the old order as accepted by the 
tsar and the Russian Orthodox Church. The academy's third 
charter (1836) proclaimed it the country's chief scientific body. The 



624 



Science and Technology 



academy continued in this role, focusing primarily on basic research, 
through the end of tsarist rule. Its achievements during this time 
were noteworthy. Dmitrii I. Mendeleev (1843-1907) compiled the 
periodic table of the elements, Nobel Prize recipient Ivan P. Pavlov 
(1849-1936) conducted research on conditioned reflexes, and 
Konstantin E. Tsiolkovskii (1857-1935), a pioneer in modern rock- 
etry, studied the theory of cosmic flight. 

Another key issue that confronted the academy at the outset was 
the extent of foreign involvement in Russian science. Peter the Great 
eagerly opened Russia to the West and encouraged the participa- 
tion of Western scientists in the development of Russian science. 
Thus, the academy initially was staffed by scientists from western 
Europe, principally of Germanic origin. The strong foreign in- 
fluence continued well into the nineteenth century. A Russian was 
not elected to the academy until the 1740s, and Russians did not 
assume control of the academy until the late 1800s. Under the 
Bolsheviks, science suffered some initial setbacks but then bene- 
fited from the government's decision to expand it. In the early years, 
many Bolsheviks feared scientists because of ideological differences. 
A number of scientists were arrested or executed; others emigrated 
to escape from the Bolsheviks. Those who stayed worked under 
difficult conditions: few facilities, inadequate housing, shortages 
of food, little access to the West, and strict political controls. 

Not long after the Bolshevik Revolution, Lenin moved to im- 
prove the situation facing scientists. In policy pronouncements, he 
emphasized the need to develop a Soviet scientific and technologi- 
cal base as the way to modernize industry. He argued that techno- 
logical progress was necessary to counter the perceived threat posed 
by the West and to demonstrate the strength of socialism (see Glos- 
sary) to the world. 

During the 1920s, Soviet science began to expand. Many new 
research institutes were added to the academy, which in 1925 was 
redesignated the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union. Govern- 
mental support of science increased under the New Economic Policy 
(NEP) introduced in 1921 (see The Era of the New Economic Pol- 
icy, ch. 2). Overall, the living and working conditions of scientists 
improved as research potentials expanded and as opportunities for 
the international exchange of information resumed. Research in 
such fields as biology, chemistry, and physics flourished during this 
period. 

Science and technology underwent significant changes during 
the years of Joseph V. Stalin's reign. The changes occurred primar- 
ily in response to three factors: Stalin's industrialization drive, his 



625 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

efforts to enforce strict ideological control over science, and the out- 
break of World War II. 

In 1928 Stalin initiated his drive to transform the Soviet Union 
into an industrial power, technologically independent of the West. 
Many new institutions were established to provide the applied 
research foundation needed to develop industrial technologies. Even 
institutes subordinate to the Academy of Sciences were directed 
to stop theoretical research and to focus on "practical" problems 
applicable to industry. In 1935 the academy adopted a charter that 
created the Engineering Sciences Division to oversee the academy's 
increased involvement in applied research. 

At the same time that Stalin was encouraging the expansion of 
science, he also was trying to establish firmer ideological control 
over science. Over time, his efforts led to a significant reduction 
in scientific effort. In 1928 Stalin initiated a purge of scientists, 
engineers, and technical personnel in an effort to remove the old 
generation and replace them with younger scientists who supported 
communist ideology. In 1934 the academy was moved from Lenin- 
grad to Moscow, where political control was easier to maintain. 
Stalin's Great Terror (see Glossary) ravaged the ranks of scien- 
tists and engineers. Many research and development programs had 
to be halted simply because the leading experts were either arrested 
or executed. Scientific ties with the West also were severed during 
this time. The extent of Stalin's interference in science became evi- 
dent in the post-World War II era. Stalin insisted that ideology 
be a part of all scientific research. In the natural sciences, he en- 
couraged research that was compatible with the tenets of dialecti- 
cal materialism (see Glossary). Such an environment opened the 
door for the influence of such individuals as Trofim D. Lysenko, 
a leading biologist and agronomist. Lysenko argued that the charac- 
teristics of a living organism could be altered by environment and 
that those acquired characteristics could be inherited, a theory that 
he tried to prove by numerous fraudulent experiments. His ideas 
fit nicely with Marxist emphasis on environmental influences and 
won him the support of Stalin. With that backing, Lysenko was 
able to arrange the removal and arrest of scientists who opposed 
his views. His influence continued well into the 1950s, when genetics 
research in the Soviet Union came to a virtual standstill. 

Another factor affecting science and technology under Stalin was 
the outbreak of World War II. Soviet science and technology 
suffered badly during the initial period of the war. Many research 
institutes and industrial facilities were destroyed or seized during 
the German offensive. The facilities that remained were evacuated 
to the eastern portions of the Soviet Union. There, all efforts were 



626 



Science and Technology 



directed toward developing science and technology in support of 
the war effort. Not surprisingly, military-related research and de- 
velopment thrived, while research and development in civilian sec- 
tors received little attention. 

The war demonstrated to Stalin the backwardness of Soviet 
science and technology. After the war, he ordered the continued 
expansion of the research and development base, particularly in 
defense and heavy industries. Allocations for science increased, new 
research facilities opened, and salaries and perquisites for scien- 
tists were improved dramatically. All available personnel, includ- 
ing captured German scientists and imprisoned Soviet scientists, 
were employed. This effort led to some important technological 
successes, such as the explosion of an atomic bomb in 1949 and 
the design of new series of tanks, aircraft, artillery, and locomotives. 

Stalin's death in 1953 led to a more relaxed environment for 
science and technology growth. At the Twentieth Party Congress 
in 1956, Nikita S. Khrushchev denounced Stalin for imprisoning 
thousands of the country's leading scientists, many of whom 
Khrushchev later rehabilitated (see Glossary). Under Khrushchev 
the number of research workers almost tripled, and the number 
of research institutes doubled. International scientific communi- 
cations and cooperation resumed. Exchanges with the West were 
encouraged as a means of acquiring technologies that Soviet scien- 
tists could assimilate and then duplicate. 

Khrushchev also initiated major changes in the organization of 
science and technology. In 1957 he abolished the industrial min- 
istries in favor of regional economic councils (sovety narodnikh 
khoziaistv — sovnarkhozy). Khrushchev thought that research, develop- 
ment, and production facilities subordinated to the sovnarkhozy could 
cooperate on programs more easily than they could under the 
ministerial system. The experiment failed, partly because of exces- 
sive duplication of effort. In 1965, under the leadership of Leonid I. 
Brezhnev, the industrial ministries were restored. The second major 
organizational change occurred in 1961, when the Academy of 
Sciences was reorganized. Concerned that the academy had focused 
too much on industrial research projects, Soviet leaders transferred 
the industry-oriented institutes to state committees. The leader- 
ship then directed the academy to focus on fundamental research. 

Under Brezhnev the Soviet Union launched another drive to 
modernize science and technology. Several economic and organiza- 
tional reforms were instituted, but none was radical enough to cause 
significant improvement. Under his policy of detente, scientific con- 
tacts and exchanges with the West increased. Soviet leaders sought 
long-term agreements with Western firms as a means of acquiring 



627 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

advanced technologies. Eventually, internal disagreements over the 
appropriate level of technological interaction with the West, cou- 
pled with restrictions placed by the West, led to a decline in con- 
tacts. Scientific and technological policies under Iurii V. Andropov 
and Konstantin U. Chernenko brought little change. Of the two 
leaders, Andropov seemed more interested in accelerating Soviet 
scientific and technological growth, but neither leader lived long 
enough to have much impact. 

The Administration of Science and Technology 

The administration of civilian science and technology encom- 
passed policy making, planning, and financing for the adminis- 
tration of nonmilitary science and technology. Policy making was 
primarily the responsibility of the Communist Party of the Soviet 
Union (CPSU) but also involved various all-union (see Glossary) 
governmental organs. At the all-union level, planning included the 
Council of Ministers, the State Committee for Science and Tech- 
nology (Gosudarstvennyi komitet po nauke i tekhnike — GKNT), 
the Academy of Sciences, and the State Planning Committee 
(Gosudarstvennyi planovyi komitet — Gosplan). Below the all-union 
level, planning was handled by branch ministries and by republic 
or regional academies. Financing involved almost all these organi- 
zations, which worked in conjunction with the Ministry of Finance 
(see Administrative Organs, ch. 8). 

Policy Making 

The formulation of scientific and technological policy in 1989 
was centered in the highest CPSU components, the Politburo and 
the Secretariat (see Politburo; Secretariat, ch. 7). As the party's 
top decision-making body, the Politburo defined priorities and the 
broad policies needed to meet them. Its decisions were reflected 
in policy deliberations and in decrees issued by the Council of 
Ministers. Day-to-day decisions on science and technology mat- 
ters were the responsibility of the Secretariat, the party's chief ex- 
ecutive body. 

Despite their responsibilities, individual members of the Polit- 
buro and the Secretariat did not have the scientific and technical 
expertise needed to make policy decisions without assistance. They 
relied on experts working in subordinate party organs and in the 
governmental apparatus. The Science and Education Institutions 
Department was the key technical unit within the CPSU Central 
Committee. It functioned as a high-level advisory staff to the Polit- 
buro and as an overseer of policy implementation. The department 
also was responsible for monitoring the work of the Academy of 



628 



Science and Technology 



Sciences and of education institutions. Other Central Committee 
departments contributed to policy making for their particular 
branches. 

Advice also was provided by personnel working in GKNT, the 
Academy of Sciences, and the Council of Ministers. In addition, 
party authorities relied on advice from special commissions 
composed of leading scientists and technical experts. These com- 
missions, created by the Council of Ministers, have advised on par- 
ticularly important science and technology policy matters affecting 
key sectors of the economy. 

Planning 

After formulating the nation's broad science and technology 
policy, the CPSU issued directives to the governmental organs 
responsible for planning specific programs. At the all-union level, 
planning involved the Council of Ministers, GKNT, the Academy 
of Sciences, Gosplan, and, to a much lesser extent, the Supreme 
Soviet. 

The Council of Ministers was responsible for implementing the 
party's broad directives. It frequently issued decrees that reflected 
science and technology decisions made by the Politburo. These 
decrees served as the base on which science and technology plans 
and programs were formed. The council also confirmed the five- 
year plans and the annual plans for science and technology, 
developed measures to improve management of research and de- 
velopment, and resolved issues relating to authors' and inventors' 
rights, cadre training, and labor wages. The council operated pri- 
marily through its Presidium, whose membership included heads 
of many agencies concerned with science and technology. 

Founded in 1965 and subordinate to the Council of Ministers, 
GKNT functioned as the central organ responsible for overall coor- 
dination of scientific and technological programs. GKNT met once 
or twice a year to decide major policy directions. Between meet- 
ings it relied on a collegium to meet weekly to examine issues. 
GKNT oversaw the work of a small number of research institutes. 

The administrative functions of GKNT included working with 
the Academy of Sciences and other interested organizations to plan 
and coordinate the development of science and technology. GKNT 
contributed to the five-year planning process by drafting a list of 
major problems and working with relevant state committees and 
the Academy of Sciences to develop proposals. GKNT evaluated 
the level of scientific and technological development in branches of 
the economy and worked with science and technology policy-making 
bodies to develop methods to improve research and innovation. 



629 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

GKNT also played an important role in coordinating and in 
monitoring interbranch problems, i.e., those that involved more 
than one industrial ministry. Proposals to conduct a project on an 
interbranch problem were submitted by a ministry to GKNT for 
approval. GKNT then oversaw the implementation of the project. 
GKNT also was responsible for improving the flow of informa- 
tion within the research and development infrastructure. Finally, 
GKNT was responsible for establishing and maintaining commu- 
nications with foreign countries on scientific and technological 
cooperation and on the purchase of foreign technologies. 

Another key organization was the Academy of Sciences, which 
both administered and performed scientific research and develop- 
ment. Working with GKNT and Gosplan, the academy coordi- 
nated and produced research and development plans for its 
subordinate research facilities and for any facility involved in a pro- 
gram under its jurisdiction. The academy made proposals on fund- 
ing, personnel, and materials for research and development. It also 
worked with GKNT to develop and submit to the Council of 
Ministers proposals for introducing new technology and forecast- 
ing trends in the economy. 

The Academy of Sciences was responsible for translating national 
plans into specific programs carried out by subordinate facilities. 
It oversaw science and technology planning for its divisions, regional 
branches, and the republic academies of sciences. 

As the nation's chief planning organ, Gosplan was responsible 
for incorporating science and technology programs into the national 
economic plan. It worked with GKNT and the Academy of Sciences 
to plan the introduction of research and development results into 
the economy, to determine the overall volume of needed capital 
investment, and to decide funding levels for science and technol- 
ogy programs, material supplies, training, and wages. Within 
Gosplan, the Unified Science and Technology Department was the 
primary unit engaged in science and technology planning. It was 
aided by advisory councils and commissions organized in key eco- 
nomic sectors. 

Below the top policy-making level, science and technology plans 
were implemented by the industrial ministries and the Academy 
of Sciences. The Soviet economy has been organized and directed 
by a complicated, centralized industrial system (see Industrial Or- 
ganization, ch. 12). The leadership of each ministry was responsi- 
ble for planning science and technology programs carried out within 
its specific industrial branch. The leaders based their plans on the 
national economic plans given to them by the higher authorities 
(see Economic Planning and Control, ch. 11). 



630 




Officer on the bridge of a modern Soviet merchant ship explaining 
the instruments, Murmansk, Russian Republic 
Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 



631 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

The science and technology planning process involved four levels 
of documents. The broadest plans spelled out the long-term (fifteen 
to twenty years), comprehensive program. These documents 
presented the best judgment of experts about future economic 
trends, probable developments in science and technology, and the 
resources needed to achieve those developments. The next level 
of documents consisted of the main directions of economic and so- 
cial development, which included a section on the development of 
science and technology. The developmental directions provided 
preliminary targets for the first five years of the period covered 
and a very general planning framework for the remaining years 
(the directions can cover ten to fifteen years). The third-level docu- 
ment was the five-year plan and the annual plans derived from it. 
This has been the key document used by branch managerial or- 
gans to organize their work. The final document, the institute plan, 
was based on the five-year plan and described the research and 
development projects to be undertaken by a particular institute. 

Financing 

Decisions about the financing of Soviet science and technology 
involved many of the same high-level party and government or- 
gans involved in the policy-making and planning processes. One 
aspect of these processes has been the determination of resources 
to be allocated to specific science and technology programs. That 
determination has been made by the CPSU Politburo, the Coun- 
cil of Ministers, GKNT, and the Academy of Sciences. The Minis- 
try of Finance has made specific science and technology allocations 
in accordance with approved plans. The State Bank (Gosudarst- 
vennyi bank — Gosbank) has issued credit for science and technol- 
ogy development projects. 

Several other organizations were involved in the administration 
of Soviet science and technology. The State Committee for Material 
and Technical Supply (Gosudarstvennyi komitet po material' no- 
tekhnicheskomu snabzheniiu — Gossnab) was responsible for supply- 
ing science and technology organizations with needed equipment 
and instruments. The State Committee for Labor and Social Prob- 
lems (Gosudarstvennyi komitet po trudu i sotsial'nym voprosam — 
Goskomtrud) was concerned with labor and wage issues. The State 
Committee for Standards (Gosudarstvennyi komitet po stan- 
dartam — Gosstandart) assigned and directed the development of 
nationwide technical and economic standards. It approved new stan- 
dards and oversaw the adherence of science and technology 
organizations to the standards. The State Committee for In- 
ventions and Discoveries (Gosudarstvennyi komitet po delam 



632 



Oceanographic research ship Vizir, of the Yug class 
Courtesy United States Navy 

izobretenii i otkrytii — Goskomizobretenie) maintained a state regis- 
try of inventions and discoveries, and it issued authors' certificates 
and patents. The All-Union Institute for Scientific and Technical 
Information (Vsesoiuznyi institut nauchnoi i tekhnicheskoi infor- 
matsii — VINITI) functioned as an information center containing 
abstracts of worldwide scientific and technical literature. 

Science and Ideology 

The extent to which the CPSU and communist ideology in- 
fluenced Soviet science and technology has varied over time. Dur- 
ing the Civil War (1918-21) and particularly during the Stalin era, 
party controls over science were extensive and oppressive. In the 
1980s, party influence over science has been far less rigid but still 
evident. 

According to one Western scholar, the CPSU controlled science 
in four ways. First, the CPSU maintained control by formulating 
the country's overall science and technology policy. Second, the 
party ensured that its policies were implemented at all levels of 
government through a network of all-union, regional, and local 
party organizations that oversaw the work of science and technol- 
ogy organs operating at comparable levels. Even in research insti- 
tutes or factories, local party committees exerted their authority 



633 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

by requiring directors and managers to adhere to party dictates 
(see Primary Party Organization, ch. 7). Local party committees 
reported to higher authorities on plan fulfillment, labor discipline, 
and worker morale. 

Third, the CPSU exercised full power over appointments to key 
positions, controlling the appointment of high-level administrators, 
mid-level managers, and probably institute directors and research 
laboratory and department heads (see Nomenklatura, ch. 7). The 
fourth method of control was ideological, including that exercised 
over both the professional and the private lives of scientists. The 
CPSU controlled individuals' work through its authority to dis- 
miss personnel, to deny bonuses or fringe benefits, to restrict travel 
and publishing opportunities, and to impose other disciplinary 
actions. Control over personal lives was maintained through 
the Committee for State Security (Komitet gosudarstvennoi 
bezopasnosti — KGB) and was evident during the 1970s and early 
1980s, when the government harshly treated dissident scientists ac- 
cused of nonconformity with party policies. The treatment eased 
under General Secretary Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who, for exam- 
ple, permitted dissident physicist Andrei Sakharov to return to 
Moscow from internal exile in Gor'kiy. 

Influence, though, has not been one sided. Science officials have 
had opportunities to affect party decisions. Since the mid-1950s, 
many top party officials have cultivated close ties to prominent scien- 
tists. This proximity has allowed scientists to influence decisions 
directly through their associations with policy makers or through 
appointments to policy advisory councils. Another opportunity has 
been appointment to top-level party organs. The number of scien- 
tists with membership in the CPSU Central Committee rose from 
seven in 1951 to nineteen in 1981. At the lower levels, facility 
managers often have used their close ties with party representa- 
tives to acquire more funds or better supplies. 

Research, Development, and Production 
Organizations 

In 1989 the Soviet scientific and technological establishment con- 
sisted of a variety of organizations engaged in the research, de- 
velopment, and production of new products or processes. In general, 
each organization specialized in one phase of the process and in 
one sector of industry. 

Many types of organizations were involved. Western specialists 
placed them in three broad categories: research institutions, de- 
sign organizations, and production facilities. In the first category, 
the most numerous organizations were the scientific research 



634 



Science and Technology 



institutes (nauchno-issledovatel 'skie instituty — Nils), which focused on 
scientific research, both basic and applied. Each Nil was headed 
by an appointed director, who oversaw a staff of researchers and 
technical personnel. Another type of research institution, the 
research laboratory (laboratoriia) , operated independently or as a 
component of a larger Nil or a production plant. 

The second category, design organizations, included design 
bureaus (konstruktorskie biuro — KBs) and technological institutes (tekh- 
nologicheskie instituty). Each of these encompassed a range of facili- 
ties with such tides as special design bureau (spetsial'noe konstruktorskoe 
biuro — SKB), central design bureau (tsentraVnoe konstruktorskoe biuro), 
and project design and technology bureau (proektno-konstruktorskoe 
i tekhnologicheskoe biuro). Design bureaus planned new products and 
machines, although some also conducted research. Technological 
institutes had responsibility for designing new processes, installa- 
tions, and machinery. 

The third category included production facilities that manufac- 
tured the new product or applied the process developed by the 
research and design facilities. The output and testing of industrial 
prototypes, industrial innovation processes, or small-batch produc- 
tion prior to the stage of mass production occurred in experimen- 
tal production or pilot plants (various Russian designations, e.g., 
opytnye zavody, opytnye stantsii) . These functioned independently or 
were attached to production facilities, research institutions, or de- 
sign organizations. 

In addition to their categorization according to the operational 
phase in which they were most involved, research, development, 
and production facilities were characterized according to their or- 
ganizational affiliation: industrial ministries, university and higher 
education, or the Academy of Sciences system. 

Industrial ministries controlled the majority of science and tech- 
nology organizations, including all types of research institutions, 
design organizations, and production facilities. The precise num- 
ber of facilities in 1989 was not available because the Soviet press 
stopped publishing such statistics about a decade earlier. Western 
specialists, however, reported that in 1973 there were 944 indepen- 
dent design organizations, and in 1974 there were 2,137 indus- 
trial Nils. The number of production facilities undoubtedly 
exceeded both those figures. 

Industrial science and technology organizations tended to con- 
centrate on one broad area, such as communications equipment, 
machine tools, or automobiles. They were directly subordinate to 
the industrial ministry responsible for that sector (see Industrial 
Research and Design, ch. 12). Science and technology work in 



635 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

ministries was directed by scientific-technical councils within the 
ministries; the councils comprised the ministry's leading scientists 
and engineers. 

The second organizational affiliation, the higher education sys- 
tem, has been administered by the Ministry of Higher and Special- 
ized Secondary Education. In addition to training scientists, the 
ministry's system provided a research base whose contribution to 
national scientific research and development has been growing. Its 
system included such varying scientific organizations as Nils, de- 
sign bureaus, problem laboratories (problemnye laboratorii), branch 
laboratories (ptraslevye laboratorii) , scientific sectors (nauchnye sekto- 
ry), and such specialized institutions as computer centers, obser- 
vatories, and botanical gardens. The number of organizations in 
the Ministry of Higher and Specialized Secondary Education and 
the percentage of the country's overall science budget allocated to 
them remained relatively small. In the late 1980s, their contribu- 
tion was increasing with the expansion of contract research. 

The third organizational affiliation, the Academy of Sciences, 
in 1989 was divided into four sections: physical sciences, engineer- 
ing, and mathematics; chemistry and biology; geosciences; and so- 
cial sciences. Grouped into these subject areas were approximately 
300 research institutes employing more than 58,000 people. The 
network also included the separate academies of sciences in each 
of the fifteen union republics of the Soviet Union (except the Rus- 
sian Republic, which was represented by the all-union academy) 
and regional divisions, the most prominent of which has been the 
Siberian Division. The academy also had responsibility for special- 
ized schools, such as the All-Union Academy of Agricultural 
Sciences and the Academy of Medical Sciences. 

As the most prestigious scientific establishment in the Soviet 
Union, the Academy of Sciences has attracted the country's best 
scientists. Membership has always been attained through election. 
In January 1988, the academy had approximately 380 academi- 
cians and 770 corresponding members. Of these, about 80 acade- 
micians and 1 70 corresponding members were elected in December 
1987. This election was noteworthy because it was the first held 
since the review of academy personnel policies had begun a year 
earlier. The review led to a number of measures directed at remov- 
ing some of the older members from active participation, such as 
requiring them to retire at age seventy-five. The new rules also 
lowered the age at which a scientist could be elected to the acad- 
emy and established an age limit beyond which officials who were 
not academicians could hold top-level administrative positions, such 
as institute director. Once voted into the academy, a member held 



636 



Science and Technology 



that title for life (as an example, dissident Sakharov retained his 
academician status even while in internal exile in Gor'kiy). 

The members of the academy usually met once a year in gen- 
eral assembly to discuss major issues, to vote on organizational mat- 
ters, and to elect new members. In October 1986, the general 
assembly elected Gurii Marchuk, formerly chairman of GKNT, 
as its president. Marchuk replaced Anatolii P. Aleksandrov, who 
had served as president for eleven years. 

Soviet scientists and governmental officials have debated the pre- 
cise role of the Academy of Sciences in the development of science 
and technology since the inception of the Soviet state. Such dis- 
cussions continued during the 1980s. Statutes defined the acad- 
emy's mission as conducting primarily basic or fundamental 
research. Some scientists and administrators, even within the acad- 
emy, have argued that this was appropriate and that the academy 
should not engage in applied research. Many others, however, have 
argued that the academy has to be involved in applied research 
not only because it employs the best scientific talent in the nation 
but also because fundamental science drives technological develop- 
ment and causes technological breakthroughs. In his speech to the 
Nineteenth Party Conference in June 1988, academy president 
Marchuk stressed that "fundamental scientific research is the basis 
of all science and all scientific and technical progress. It defines 
the prospects for ten to twenty years hence, it achieves the break- 
throughs both in the production sphere and in the sphere of 
knowledge of nature and society." 

Soviet Innovation: Problems and Solutions 

Central to an understanding of Soviet science and technology 
is an understanding of the innovation process. Innovation, which 
is the transfer of a scientific discovery (new product or process) 
into production, has long been a problem for the Soviet Union. 
Despite a strong scientific base, the country has had a mixed record 
of innovation. Although in some — particularly defense-related — 
industries Soviet scientists and engineers have scored major tech- 
nological successes, in many other — particularly consumer — 
industries they have failed to implement useful innovations. In the 
late 1980s, the status of innovation was a key concern of the leader- 
ship, which sought new policies and institutional arrangements to 
facilitate the process. 

In the 1980s, several key problems affected Soviet innovation. 
One was that factory managers had little incentive to introduce 
new products or processes. Innovation in a command economy 
differs greatly from innovation in a market economy. In the latter, 



637 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

the drive to introduce technological change emanates from the 
producers, who attempt to satisfy consumer demand before com- 
petitors do. In the Soviet economy, production of innovative 
products and processes has been assigned by government planners. 
Producers have been directed by top-level planning organs to in- 
corporate in their plants' output a newly innovated product or 
process. Yet in the Soviet economy a plant's success has been mea- 
sured by the gross output required by the annual plan. Factory 
managers have strived to fulfill the plan in terms of the quantity 
of goods produced. Managers have viewed introducing a new 
product or process, which may result in a slowdown in produc- 
tion, as an impediment to their goal of plan fulfillment. They gener- 
ally have been unwilling to forgo certain success in exchange for 
potentially greater, yet unguaranteed, future capability. 

Another problem concerned pricing policies. In the Soviet econ- 
omy, prices of goods have been determined by central planners 
rather than in response to market demand. To boost innovation, 
planners sometimes permitted factory managers to charge higher 
prices for newly introduced products. These prices often were set 
too low to compensate for the increased cost of production and for 
the risk of failure. Therefore, prices have done little to encourage 
innovation. In fact, according to one Western specialist, this pric- 
ing mechanism often has been counterproductive. It promoted a 
practice whereby managers tended to exaggerate the degree of 
novelty of a new or improved product to central pricing authori- 
ties in an attempt to receive permission to charge higher prices and 
thus boost profits. Incentives given to industrial research develop- 
ment personnel on the basis of the expected return from a new in- 
novation also have failed to improve the process. 

Yet another problem has been the organizational separation 
among the various facilities engaged in research, development, and 
production. The separation occurred because Soviet scientific and 
technological facilities have tended to specialize in one phase of the 
research-to-production cycle. Research institutions, design organi- 
zations, testing facilities, and production facilities operated indepen- 
dently from one another. As a result, the transfer of a scientific 
discovery from the necessary development and testing phases to 
final production has necessitated crossing multiple organizational 
boundaries. To be successful, such transfers required stringent inter- 
organizational cooperation to ensure proper timing and exchange 
of information. Soviet and Western observers agree that this cooper- 
ation has been generally lacking in the Soviet Union, where in- 
stitutional interests have tended to override other considerations 



638 



Geological research ship Morskoi geolog, of the Meridian class 

Courtesy United States Navy 

and information exchange among scientists and engineers has been 
limited. 

Organizational separation, however, was not limited to the suc- 
cessive stages of the research-to-production cycle. Soviet facilities 
also were separated in terms of their organizational affiliation. The 
results of scientific research and design work often must cross or- 
ganizational boundaries to enter production. This has imposed yet 
another layer of bureaucracy, which has done little to encourage 
innovation. The most difficult barrier has been that existing be- 
tween research institutions subordinate to the Academy of Sciences 
and production facilities subordinate to an industrial ministry. Even 
within the industrial ministry system, production facilities sub- 
ordinate to one ministry have been hesitant to cooperate with those 
subordinate to a different ministry. 

The ability to innovate also has been hurt by a lack of research 
and development equipment and of experimental testing and 
production facilities. Equipment has been inadequate in quality 
and quantity. The absence of appropriate testing facilities has af- 
fected all science and technology organizations but has been par- 
ticularly evident in the Academy of Sciences organizational network. 
Academy scientists generally have had to rely on industry to make 
available testing and production facilities, but, as they often stated 



639 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

in the 1980s, industry did not comply. As a result, academy offi- 
cials, especially those in the Siberian Division and in the Ukrain- 
ian Academy of Sciences, initiated the development of the 
academy's own experimental facilities. 

Funding has been another key factor adversely affecting inno- 
vation. In theory, one of the advantages of a command economy 
is the ability to concentrate resources in a given area. Over the 
years, the Soviet Union has repeatedly taken advantage of this abil- 
ity by focusing resources on technologies and industries considered 
to have strategic importance, e.g., the military. Yet priority allo- 
cation, by definition, has been limited. Not all industries can receive 
the same attention. Indeed, the Soviet experience has been one in 
which selected industries and technologies were developed at the 
expense of others. 

To some degree the innovation problems in the 1980s were a 
result of deliberate choices made in response to conditions arising 
after 1917. According to Ronald Amann, a Sovietologist affiliated 
with the University of Birmingham in England, some decisions 
made by Soviet leaders to overcome technological backwardness 
significantly influenced the long-range development of technology. 
The decisions were those that focused on replicating Western models 
instead of fostering Soviet innovation, that concentrated resources 
on industries considered by the leadership to have strategic impor- 
tance, and that compensated for the shortage of skilled manpower 
by developing specialized and centralized research and develop- 
ment organizations in each branch of industry. These decisions con- 
tributed to the evolution of a system that in the 1980s was 
characterized by uneven technological progress and by the sepa- 
ration of science and production facilities. 

From the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s, Soviet leaders' responses 
to these innovation difficulties has been a series of economic and 
organizational reforms. They have introduced measures aimed at 
improving planning and at providing greater financial incentives 
to organizations engaged in innovation. They also have tried to 
overcome the barriers separating research, development, and 
production facilities. The implementation of reforms accelerated 
under Gorbachev, who viewed the improvement of Soviet science 
and technology as crucial to his goal of economic restructuring 
(perestroika — see Glossary). 

In September 1987, the CPSU Central Committee and the Coun- 
cil of Ministers issued a decree called "On the Changeover of Scien- 
tific Organizations to Full Cost Accounting and Self- Financing. " 
Basically, the decree changed the way in which all types of scien- 
tific organizations were financed. Instead of receiving state funds 



640 



Science and Technology 



allocated to finance the operation of the entire organization, scien- 
tific establishments would be financed on the basis of specific 
research, planning, and design projects. These would be arranged 
through contracts with other organizations, primarily industrial en- 
terprises (see Glossary). The theory behind this change was to en- 
courage scientific organizations to generate a "product" more useful 
to industry and to assume more responsibility for the applicability 
of their output. To increase the incentives for assuming greater 
responsibility, the decree also stipulated that the basic source of 
an organization's wage and incentive funds would be the profits 
earned by that organization. A similar decree, the Law on State 
Enterprises (Associations), was issued at approximately the same 
time. It granted to industrial enterprises greater authority to manage 
their own operations and established a closer link between funds 
for worker benefits and enterprise profits. 

The organizational remedies instituted under Gorbachev ex- 
panded several arrangements to attempt to bridge the gap between 
scientific and production entities. The first involved the scientific 
production associations (nauchno-proizvodstvennye ob 3 'edineniia — 
NPOs), which were introduced in the late 1960s. NPOs combined 
under one management all facilities involved in a particular 
research-to-production program — the research institutions, design 
organizations, testing facilities, and production facilities. Soviet lead 
ers considered this arrangement more conducive to innovation 
because it enabled one leading component, usually the research 
institution, to coordinate the work of the other components engaged 
in the process. Although officials admitted that NPOs have had 
operational problems (such as poor planning and lack of an ex- 
perimental base), they rated NPOs as successful overall. In 1986 
they began an expansion in the number of NPOs. Whereas in 1985 
there were approximately 250 NPOs (roughly the same number 
that existed in the early 1970s), in 1986 there were 400, with an 
additional 100 projected for the following year. 

A similar organizational remedy was the formation of the inter- 
branch scientific-technical complex (mezhotraslevoi nauchno-tekhnicheskii 
kompleks — MNTK). Based on so-called engineering centers es- 
tablished in the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, MNTKs were 
initiated in 1985. MNTKs differed from NPOs in that they en- 
compassed, as their name implies, facilities subordinate to vari- 
ous administrative authorities, including the Academy of Sciences. 
MNTKs were also larger than NPOs; in fact, some MNTKs in- 
cluded several NPOs and industrial production associations. In Janu- 
ary 1988, Soviet officials reported that more than twenty MNTKs, 
including approximately 500 organizations and enterprises and 



641 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

elements of more than sixty ministries and departments, had been 
formed. 

MNTKs were charged with coordinating and performing all the 
research and development work in their given area, from basic 
research to production. To facilitate their work, MNTKs were em- 
powered to request resources in addition to those allocated by the 
plan; to receive priority in establishing pilot production bases and 
in ordering materials and resources; and to have the right to de- 
mand full delivery of the ordered amounts. 

In an assessment of the MNTKs published in January 1988, two 
Soviet economists discussed the accomplishments of the "Rotor" 
and "Mikrokhirurgiia glaza" MNTKs. The former had expand- 
ed the production of automatic rotary and rotary conveyor lines 
in 1987 and expected to more than double production in 1988. The 
Rotor MNTK also developed a rotary conveyor line for the injec- 
tion molding of items made of thermoplastic materials. The Mikro- 
khirugiia glaza MNTK was credited with developing a new 
technology for performing higher quality operations that signifi- 
cantly shortened overall treatment time. On the negative side, 
however, the economists listed several problems hindering the oper- 
ation of MNTKs: lack of cooperation of superior organs, substan- 
tial lag in the development of experimental facilities, shortage of 
designers and manufacturing engineers, insufficient authority to 
obtain financing, absence of a unified plan for an MNTK, and 
confusion regarding the composition of MNTKs. Despite these criti- 
cisms, Soviet authorities in the late 1980s repeatedly stated their 
support of MNTKs and presented them as a promising link be- 
tween science and production. 

Technology and Information Transfer 

Soviet leaders have tried to overcome technological backward- 
ness by acquiring technology from the more advanced Western and 
Asian countries. Since 1917 Soviet officials have worked to obtain 
not only foreign equipment but also technological processes, know- 
how, and information. Acquisitions have helped the Soviet Union, 
in some cases, to compensate for a poorly developed indigenous 
technology and, in other cases, to bolster or provide a missing com- 
ponent in an otherwise fairly well-established industry. 

The transfer of foreign technology began not long after the 
Bolshevik Revolution and continued through the 1980s, although 
the official emphasis, as well as the kind and quantity of technol- 
ogy transferred, varied greatly over time. Lenin initially wanted 
to avoid any dependence on Western technological imports, but 
the lack of funds for indigenous development forced him to seek 



642 



Science and Technology 



limited foreign investments. Stalin emphasized technological 
autarchy. He expended huge resources in efforts to develop in- 
digenous science and technology, and he severely restricted con- 
tacts with Western businessmen and scientists. Nonetheless, severe 
backwardness in some key industries forced Stalin to engage in 
short-term borrowing from the West. During World War II, the 
Soviet regime used captured German equipment and technologi- 
cal experts to help develop lagging Soviet industries. 

The post-Stalin era brought renewed interest in dealing with the 
West. Khrushchev eased restrictions on Soviet access to Western 
technology but found that Western governments sought political 
concessions in return for trade agreements. Under Brezhnev, Soviet 
technology acquisitions increased markedly. Many long-term agree- 
ments, as well as accords providing for foreign construction of in- 
dustrial plants in the Soviet Union, were signed during the Brezhnev 
era. By the late 1970s, however, both Western and Soviet leaders 
began to question the political and economic wisdom of technol- 
ogy transfers. By the early 1980s, technology transfers from the 
United States to the Soviet Union were curtailed severely in response 
to political, economic, and military concerns. At the same time, 
however, the Soviet Union began trying to obtain Japanese tech- 
nology — particularly electronics, computer science, and metallurgy — 
because the Japanese were much less restrictive in their exports. 

In 1986 Gary K. Bertsch, a United States specialist in Soviet 
technology, described five means by which technology has been 
transferred to the Soviet Union. The most direct, and probably 
the most common, was the commercial sale of equipment to the 
Soviet Union. When the West provided opportunities, Soviet lead- 
ers increased purchases of Western equipment. 

The second type of transfer included the extensive and compli- 
cated modes of industrial cooperation between Western firms and 
their Soviet counterparts. According to Bertsch, this cooperation 
has had many forms, among them: sales of equipment (sometimes 
for complete production systems or turnkey plants), including tech- 
nical assistance; licenses of patents, copyrights, and production 
know-how; franchises of trademarks and production know-how; 
purchases and sales between partners, involving exchanges of in- 
dustrial raw materials and intermediate products; subcontracts in- 
volving the provision of production services; sales of plant, 
equipment, and technology with payment in resulting or related 
products; production contracting, involving agreement for trans- 
ferred production capabilities in the form of capital equipment and 
technology; coproduction agreements allowing partners to produce 



643 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

and market the same products resulting from a shared technology; 
and joint research and development. 

Another type of transfer involved foreign travel by Soviet scien- 
tists, participation by them in academic and scholarly conferences, 
and screening of literature. In the early 1980s, as part of a general 
tightening of policies on technology export, the United States 
government began restricting Soviet scientists from traveling in and 
attending meetings in the United States to prevent their access to 
American science and technology. Screening of literature has been 
a valuable source of information for the Soviet Union. Soviet scien- 
tists have had easy access to Western and Japanese publications, 
and for years they have relied heavily on this literature as a primary 
source of foreign technology. 

The fourth type of transfer was covert acquisition. This kind of 
transfer was the most feared because of its potential impact on Soviet 
and United States military development. The ways in which the 
Soviet Union acquired technology varied and involved more than 
their intelligence services. For example, some acquisitions were car- 
ried out by Soviet diplomats stationed worldwide. Other acquisi- 
tions were made by diverting controlled technology products from 
legitimate trade destinations to the Soviet Union. Finally, some 
acquisitions occurred through legitimate firms established by the 
Soviet Union or East European countries in Western nations. 

The fifth type of transfer was intergovernmental agreements on 
scientific and technological cooperation. In the early 1970s, for ex- 
ample, the United States and the Soviet Union concluded eleven 
separate agreements pledging cooperation in such fields as science 
and technology, environmental protection, atomic energy, medi- 
cine, and energy. In some cases, these agreements led to frequent 
exchanges between American and Soviet scientists cooperating in 
specific areas. This type of arrangement, however, decreased 
markedly in the late 1970s as the United States responded to Soviet 
emigration policies and to Soviet involvement in Afghanistan and 
in Poland. Under Gorbachev, cooperative agreements resumed. 

Using these forms of transfer, the Soviet Union obtained a range 
of technologies, some of which probably had significant military 
applications. The chemical and automotive industries relied heavily 
on Western imports. In the early 1980s, the Soviet Union bought 
equipment badly needed for the gas pipeline it was building from 
Urengoy to Uzhgorod. It acquired technologies applicable to the 
military, including complete computer systems designs, concepts, 
and software, plus a variety of Western general-purpose computers, 
minicomputers, and other hardware. It acquired low-power, low- 
noise, high- sensitivity receivers; optical, pulsed power source and 



644 



Science and Technology 



other laser-related components; and titanium alloys, welding equip- 
ment, and furnaces for producing titanium plates applicable to sub- 
marine construction. 

These acquisitions raised concerns in the West that the Soviet 
Union was deriving too many military and economic benefits in- 
imical to Western interests. Some critics argued that technology 
transfers allowed the Soviet Union to save millions of rubles (for 
value of the ruble — see Glossary) in research and development costs 
and years of development time. They also argued that Soviet ac- 
quisitions allowed the regime to modernize critical sectors of in- 
dustry without absorbing rising military production costs, to achieve 
greater weapons performance, and to incorporate countermeasures 
to Western weapons. They further argued that the West should 
impose stricter controls on such transfers. This position was adopted 
by the United States government in the early 1980s, when it began 
imposing strict controls and urging West European governments 
to follow suit. 

Not everyone agreed with this position, however. Western analysts 
in the late 1980s pointed out that both the econometric and the case- 
study approaches used to assess the impact of technology transfers 
produced tentative results. One conclusion was that the Soviet ex- 
perience in using and assimilating Western technology was a mixed 
success. In some cases, particularly in military-related industries, 
the Soviet Union was successful in incorporating Western equip- 
ment or processes. In other areas, the equipment was used ineffi- 
ciently or not at all. 

Many Soviet scientists and policy makers shared this negative 
assessment. During the 1980s, the Soviet press published many 
articles in which Soviet officials complained that they were wast- 
ing valuable hard currency to purchase equipment that lay idle be- 
cause of industry's inability or unwillingness to install it. Other 
officials, including former Academy of Sciences president Aleksan- 
drov, argued that the Soviet Union did not need to import Western 
technology because it had the capability to develop it domestically. 
In fact, too much reliance on Western imports had harmed the 
Soviet Union because indigenous institutions had been denied the 
opportunity to develop the technology and, hence, to grow tech- 
nologically. 

Despite these arguments, the policy under Gorbachev appeared 
to Western observers to increase technological trade. Soviet authori- 
ties instituted some organizational changes to facilitate and to en- 
courage more contact with Western firms. Yet Gorbachev also 
expressed concern over the balance of payments issue and cautioned 
against too many purchases from the West. 



645 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Military Research and Development 

Science and technology in defense and civilian sectors differed 
markedly in both organization and performance. Military research 
and development generally functioned more efficiently and pro- 
duced more advanced technologies. 

The principal organizations involved in Soviet military science 
and technology were subordinate to the defense industrial minis- 
tries. The ministries responsible for research, design, and produc- 
tion of military equipment and weapons or their components 
consisted of the Ministry of the Aviation Industry, the Ministry 
of the Communications Equipment Industry, the Ministry of the 
Defense Industry, the Ministry of the Electronics Industry, the 
Ministry of General Machine Building, the Ministry of the Machine 
Tool and Tool-Building Industry, the Ministry of Medium Machine 
Building, the Ministry of the Radio Industry, and the Ministry 
of the Shipbuilding Industry. These nine ministries were among 
the eighteen ministries of the machine-building and metal-working 
complex (MBMW) under the control of the Defense Council (see 
Machine Building and Metal Working, ch. 12). Each of the nine 
ministries incorporated institutes engaged in applied research and 
a network of bureaus responsible for designing and developing new 
military equipment and processes. In 1989 these ministries directed 
the work of thousands of plants making weapons and weapons com- 
ponents, at least 450 military research and development organi- 
zations, and approximately fifty major design bureaus. (Other 
industrial ministries contributed to military research, development, 
and production. For example, some military vehicles were produced 
by the Ministry of Automotive and Agricultural Machine Build- 
ing, and fuel and chemical warfare agents were produced by the 
Ministry of the Chemical Industry.) 

The second category consisted of the Ministry of Defense and 
its subordinate research facilities. Little information on these in- 
stitutes has been published, but their work undoubtedly has been 
concentrated on those areas most relevant to military requirements. 
These institutes maintained close contact with the industrial research 
institutes and the design bureaus. Their main function appeared 
to be to evaluate the latest scientific achievements and to forecast 
the development of the Soviet armed forces. 

The third category comprised the facilities considered part of 
civilian science. These primarily were the 300 research institutes 
affiliated with the Academy of Sciences. Some of the country's most 
important military research programs were conducted by the 
Academy of Sciences. Other institutes in this category included 



646 



Science and Technology 



university facilities and research establishments subordinate to the 
civilian production ministries. 

The final category consisted of the coordinating agencies. The 
most powerful organization was the Military Industrial Commis- 
sion (Voenno-promyshlennaia komissiia — VPK), which included 
representatives from the defense industry ministries, the Ministry 
of Defense, Gosplan, and probably the CPSU Secretariat. VPK 
monitored and coordinated all military research and development 
and production. It reviewed new weapons proposals for their tech- 
nical feasibility and for production requirements, approved re- 
search-to-production timetables submitted by lead organizations, 
and participated in planning and supervising major technological 
programs, apparently including those conducted by Academy of 
Sciences institutes. 

The second important coordinating agency was GKNT. 
Although mandated to plan, oversee, and regulate scientific research 
and development, evidence on its operation suggested that it had 
little direct influence over the defense sector. Nevertheless, GKNT 
exerted some general influence over military research and develop- 
ment in that it formulated the basic scientific and technical problems 
of the country and worked out the programs needed to address 
them. 

The various institutional components of military research and 
development interacted in a way that generally was far more produc- 
tive than that of the civilian sector. The defense sector more often 
succeeded in seeing a scientific idea through the various develop- 
ment stages into production. Many of those ideas may not have 
represented a leading-edge technology (Soviet military research and 
development were thought to be more evolutionary than revolu- 
tionary), but at least they were carried through into production. 

One of the reasons Soviet military research and development 
fared better has been the high priority given to it by the regime. 
The defense sector received not only more funds but also better 
resources and the best personnel. Perhaps most important in terms 
of priority was the level of political commitment. Maintaining a 
strong military capable of matching United States military strength 
has been a high priority for Soviet political leaders. This translated 
into a strong commitment to ensure that military science and tech- 
nology developed and functioned to support the Soviet military. 
High priority was not the only factor explaining the military sec- 
tor's superior performance. Another factor was that defense 
researchers had better access to development facilities. Research 
projects in the military tended not to "die" because of lack of 
research facilities' access to development facilities. 



647 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Another factor affecting military research and development was 
that the defense sector was not so rigidly bound to production quan- 
tity rather than quality. Civilian production enterprises often were 
reluctant to innovate because of the time needed to adjust a plant's 
operations to the production of the new item or use of the new 
process. Such adjustments have been viewed in the civilian sector 
as interruptions because they cut into the time needed to meet a 
plant's production quotas. Military production facilities, which had 
rigorous quality-control measures, faced less pressure to meet a 
specified production goal. 

Finally, coordination among military research and development 
establishments was more effective than that in the civilian sector. 
Facilities involved in the various phases of the military research- 
to-production cycle were more inclined to interact with one another. 
Furthermore, design facilities in the defense establishment tended 
to be larger and more capable of developing a research idea fur- 
ther through the research-to-production cycle. Design organizations 
in the military also tended to generate better design documenta- 
tion for production plants to implement. Some of the administra- 
tive barriers encountered in the civilian sector were overcome in 
the military sector, in part by giving lead institutes the power to 
coordinate efforts for specific programs. 

The success of the defense industry has been something Soviet 
leaders wanted to replicate across the spectrum of scientific and 
technological sectors. Gorbachev patterned many of the reforms 
instituted during the mid-1980s after organizational arrangements 
and policies in the defense sector. For example, the decision to 
switch financing of research and development work from funding 
of institutes to funding of specific projects, as well as emphasizing 
contract work, was adapted from the military sector. Improving 
the long-range planning process and the quality-control process were 
other examples. To facilitate the reforms, Gorbachev moved several 
defense managers into key civilian positions. The idea was that these 
individuals would use skills learned in the defense sector to strive 
for improvements in the civilian sector. 

Training 

Training of scientists and engineers has been an important aspect 
of the country's overall scientific and technological effort. Soviet 
leaders since Lenin have strongly emphasized education and its 
contribution to the development of science and technology. The 
result has been the emergence of a network of education institu- 
tions that have trained some of the world's best scientists. 



648 



Science and Technology 



Training in science and engineering has generally begun in the 
secondary schools. The nationwide curriculum in effect during the 
1980s emphasized mathematics, the natural sciences, and lan- 
guages. By the time students completed their secondary education, 
they had taken two years of algebra, two years of geometry, and 
one year each of trigonometry, calculus, physics, chemistry, and 
biology. Beginning in the seventh grade, those with special skills 
in the sciences could enroll in optional science courses. Western 
specialists have considered Soviet science education, particularly 
in physics and mathematics, superior to that received in secondary 
schools in the United States. 

Soviet institutions of higher learning (vysshie uchebnye zavedeniia — 
VUZy) included universities and institutes. The universities in the 
Soviet Union offered five-year programs that tended to be narrowly 
focused. Advanced training in many technical fields was provided 
in specialized institutes. The VUZy represented an additional source 
of research for the development of science and technology. Until 
1987 that research was funded primarily through the state budget 
and, less frequently, through contracts with industry. The 1987 
decree, which changed scientific organizations to self- financing sta- 
tus, charged Soviet administrators to develop a plan for transfer- 
ring VUZy to the same financial arrangement. 

Despite the success in education, the Soviet Union during the 
1980s faced several key problems affecting its ability to train scien- 
tists and engineers and to place them where needed. Schools, es- 
pecially those outside the major urban areas, suffered from a lack 
of qualified staff, supplies, and equipment. Efforts during the 
mid-1980s to launch an extensive program of computer training 
were hampered by the lack of computers on which to train stu- 
dents. Other problems included a high dropout rate and the refusal 
of many graduates to seek jobs in geographic locations and in 
specialties targeted for development by government planners. In 
response to these problems, Soviet officials during 1987 and 1988 
initiated measures to reform the education system once again. 
Among the stated goals were an improvement in the overall train- 
ing of scientific and technical specialists and the institution of greater 
cooperation between VUZy and industry. 

The need to provide good training to scientists and engineers 
and to tear down bureaucratic impediments between the develop- 
ment of technology and its application in industry became espe- 
cially important in the late 1980s. Gorbachev's program to reverse 
the country's economic decline demanded the increased applica- 
tion of science and technology to make industry more effective. 
Although much of the needed technology was available in the West, 



649 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

the Soviet Union could neither politically nor economically afford 
to neglect development of its own scientific and technological base. 

* * * 

Many excellent books and articles have been written about Soviet 
science and technology by such authors as Loren R. Graham, Philip 
Hanson, Bruce Parrott, Simon Kassel, and Thane Gustafson. Some 
of the more recent publications by these and other authors include 
Science, Philosophy, and Human Behavior in the Soviet Union by Loren R. 
Graham; The Communist Party and Soviet Science by Stephen Fortes- 
cue; and Trade, Technology, and Soviet-American Relations, edited by 
Bruce Parrott. Another excellent source on all aspects of science 
and technology policy is the compendium of papers submitted to 
the Joint Economic Committee of the United States Congress. The 
latest edition was released in 1987 and is titled Gorbachev's Economic 
Plans. A number of studies on particularly defense-related Soviet 
technologies have been published. They include The Technological 
Level of Soviet Industry, edited by Ronald Amann, Julian M. Cooper, 
and R.W. Davies; Industrial Innovation in the Soviet Union, edited by 
Amann and Cooper; and Technical Progress and Soviet Economic De- 
velopment, also edited by Amann and Cooper. For information on 
current science and technology issues, the best sources are the Radio 
Free Europe/Radio Liberty research reports, the Foreign Broad- 
cast Information Service's Daily Report: Soviet Union, and the Joint 
Publication Research Service's translations series, USSR: Science 
and Technology Policy. (For further information and complete cita- 
tions, see Bibliography.) 



650 



Chapter 17. Military Doctrine and 
Strategic Concerns 



officer describing military strategy 



Understanding the stance that the Soviet Union has 

adopted on military affairs requires analyzing the meaning the 
Soviet regime has given to concepts such as military doctrine, mili- 
tary policy, and military science, as well as comprehending the ideo- 
logical basis of these terms. In Soviet military writings, these 
concepts overlapped considerably, and Soviet military theorists 
stressed their interdependence. Military doctrine represented the 
official view on the nature of future wars and on the methods of 
fighting them. Military policy offered practical guidelines for struc- 
turing the Soviet armed forces and for building up Soviet defenses. 
Military science — the study of concepts of warfare and of the 
weapons needed to accomplish military missions — supported the 
formulation of doctrine and policy. Military doctrine and military 
policy directed the findings of military science toward fulfillment 
of the political goals of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union 
(CPSU). 

Soviet military doctrine was grounded in Marxist- Leninist (see 
Glossary) theory as the CPSU interpreted it. The party understood 
the world as a battleground of classes and social systems and pre- 
dicted the "inevitable victory of socialism." Thus the party's inter- 
pretation of Marxist-Leninist doctrine provided the Soviet military 
with a framework for developing strategic and operational concepts 
for winning wars. 

Soviet military doctrine was the most fundamental and the most 
influential of the theoretical concepts that governed the conduct 
of Soviet military affairs. It influenced procurement of weapons, 
colored threat assessments, and provided a theoretical basis for the 
party's military policy. It determined Soviet arms control proposals 
and the kinds of arms control agreements that the Soviet Union 
would be willing to sign. Together with the government's military 
policy, military doctrine shaped Soviet military- strategic initiatives 
abroad. 

Until 1956 Soviet doctrine was based on Lenin's thesis of the 
"inevitability of war" between capitalism and socialism (see Glos- 
sary). Such a war would be fought in defense of the socialist mother- 
land and end with the clear-cut victory of socialism. Thus, it would 
be both defensive and victory oriented. The development and 
deployment of nuclear weapons changed doctrinal views on war's 
inevitability. It soon became clear that nuclear war would cause 
such widespread destruction that it could not be a rational tool of 



653 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

policy, that victory in a nuclear war was problematic, and that a 
nuclear power ought to deter rather than fight such a war. Soviet 
civilian leaders and military theorists expressed their belief in nuclear 
deterrence by declaring that a world war with capitalism was no 
longer unavoidable . They also argued that the shift in the correla- 
tion of forces and resources (see Glossary) in favor of socialism has 
made war avoidable. But Soviet political and military leaders did 
not condemn the use of nuclear weapons for fighting a war, and 
they did not relinquish the requirement to win. As a result, Soviet 
military doctrine combined the concepts of nuclear deterrence, nu- 
clear war, and victory. 

Consequently, even in the nuclear era, Soviet military science 
remained, in the words of the eighteenth-century Russian com- 
mander Aleksandr Suvorov, a "science of victory" in armed con- 
flict. The most important component of military science, military 
art, and the latter' s highest level, military strategy, continued to 
aim at complete defeat of the adversary. The drive to prevail at 
all costs and under all circumstances directed the other two com- 
ponents of military art: operational art and tactics. In the late 1980s, 
theoretical concepts for the study and conduct of armed warfare — 
such as the laws of war, the laws of armed conflict, and the princi- 
ples of military art — continued to emphasize victory. 

Marxist-Leninist military doctrine has had considerable effect 
on arms control. On all levels — strategic nuclear, theater nuclear, 
and conventional — the doctrine's orientation toward victory has 
demanded capabilities for fighting and winning wars. 

The Soviet Union never allowed arms control to interfere with 
achievement of its military objectives nor to constrain the strategic 
goals of the armed forces. Even in the late 1980s, in spite of General 
Secretary Mikhail S. Gorbachev's "new thinking" (see Glossary) 
and his strong emphasis on arms reductions, the military remained 
mistrustful of political solutions and reluctant to accept sweeping 
changes in doctrine and strategy. 

Marxist-Leninist Theory of War 

The Marxist-Leninist theory of war provided a basis for Soviet 
military theory and practice. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels de- 
veloped Marxism (see Glossary), which was further elaborated by 
Vladimir I. Lenin, the first leader of the Soviet Union. The Marxist- 
Leninist view of war rested on the principle that war is a continua- 
tion of politics and that the aim of war is to achieve military victory 
so as to hasten the political victory of socialism. Soon after the Soviet 
Union acquired nuclear weapons, a debate arose in Soviet leader- 
ship circles over whether a catastrophic nuclear war could be a 



654 



Military Doctrine and Strategic Concerns 

continuation of politics. Theorists debated whether waging nuclear 
war was in the best interests of socialism, or whether Marxist- 
Leninist policy should exclude nuclear war. 

Since the 1950s, two lines of argument concerning nuclear war 
as a tool of policy have existed in the Soviet Union. Some civilian 
and military leaders have maintained that because nuclear war is 
too destructive, one should never be fought. Conversely, the authors 
of a volume entitled Marxism- Leninism on War and the Army, which 
has appeared in six editions since 1957 and sets forth the Marxist- 
Leninist philosophy of war as well as the CPSU's official views on 
conducting war, have consistently upheld nuclear war as a legiti- 
mate continuation of politics and have endorsed the use of nuclear 
weapons. 

Marxist-Leninist theory of war has not only established theo- 
retical foundations for fighting and averting nuclear wars but also 
has provided practical guidelines for categorizing wars according 
to their "class essence" as just wars (see Glossary) and unjust 
(predatory) wars. It also has purportedly discovered objective "laws 
of war" (see fig. 26). These laws governed the conduct of war and 
promoted victory. 

War as a Continuation of Politics 

According to Marxist-Leninist theory, the essence of war is po- 
litical. Lenin adopted the dictum of the nineteenth-century Prus- 
sian strategist Carl von Clausewitz that war is a continuation of 
politics by other, i.e., violent, means. In contrast to Clausewitz, 
however, who understood politics as the relationship between states, 
Lenin regarded politics as class struggle within states. Lenin also 
believed that class struggle within states dictated the kinds of prepa- 
ration that these states made for war, the declarations of wars be- 
tween states, the conduct of wars between states, and the outcome 
of wars. 

Contemporary Marxist-Leninist interpretation of war derived 
from Lenin's understanding of war as the outcome of class strug- 
gle. According to this view, noncommunist states were ruled by 
classes that were hostile to the "dictatorship of the proletariat" 
established by the Soviet Union and other socialist states. In par- 
ticular, the Marxist-Leninist understanding of war attributed to 
the United States, as the most powerful representative of "imperi- 
alism" (the final stage of capitalism), the goal of altering the course 
of world development by destroying communism (the final stage 
of socialism). Marxism-Leninism assigned to the Soviet armed 
forces the task of preventing the destruction of communism by 



655 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



MARXIST-LENINIST THEORY OF WAR 




Figure 26. Soviet Military-Political Concepts, 1989 



waging a defensive but victorious war with all modern weapons 
at their disposal. 

In the 1960s, before development of the concept of limited nuclear 
war, Soviet strategists debated whether or not nuclear war could 
be a rational tool of policy because the widespread destruction it 
would cause could prevent it from promoting socialism's final vic- 
tory. Some Soviet leaders, notably Nikita S. Khrushchev and the 
Soviet military theorists who shared his views, maintained that, 
considering the extremes of nuclear violence, nuclear war could 
not be a continuation of politics by means of armed force (see Evolu- 
tion of Military Doctrine, this ch.). In the 1970s, Leonid I. Brezhnev 



656 



Military Doctrine and Strategic Concerns 

claimed that whoever started a nuclear war would be committing 
suicide, and he asserted that the Soviet Union would never be the 
first to use nuclear weapons. In the 1980s, Soviet civilian and mili- 
tary leaders adopted a similar stance, repeatedly declaring that no 
victor could emerge in a general nuclear war and that it would lead 
to the destruction of humanity. These statements seemed to modify 
Lenin's dictum that war is the continuation of politics. 

By contrast, the official position on war, as communicated to 
the military in consecutive editions of Marxism-Leninism on War and 
the Army, one of the fundamental works of Soviet military theory, 
has remained unchanged. The 1968 edition maintained that all 
wars, ' 'even a possible thermonuclear one," are and will be "a 
continuation of politics by means of armed force." The most re- 
cent edition available in 1989, Marxist-Leninist Teaching on War and 
the Army, published in 1984, deemed a nuclear attack reprehensi- 
ble but regarded as "just and lawful" the use of nuclear weapons 
either to respond to an enemy strike or to forestall an impending 
nuclear strike by an adversary. According to this edition, "nuclear 
missile war fully retains the general social essence of war' ' and is 
"a continuation of politics by other, violent means." 

This apparent regarding of all weapons, no matter how destruc- 
tive, as "just and lawful" means for the defense of socialism 
stemmed from Marxist-Leninist teaching on just and unjust wars. 
According to this teaching, wars waged by the Soviet Union and 
socialist states allied with it were a "continuation of the politics 
of revolution" and led to a revolutionary transformation of the 
world. Hence, in the Marxist-Leninist scale of values, all wars 
fought by socialist armies were both just and revolutionary. By con- 
trast, all wars waged by "imperialists" were, by definition, un- 
just. Marxist-Leninist theory also asserted that all wars fought in 
defense of the socialist motherland were unconditionally just and 
could be fought with all modern weapons, including nuclear ones. 

Laws of War 

The belief that history was on the side of socialism and that 
Marxism-Leninism was a basis for discovering "objective" laws 
governing social and economic change has caused a proliferation 
of laws and principles in Soviet military thought. On the most gen- 
eral level, the laws of war were factors determining the course and 
outcome of wars. These laws expressed the political philosophy of 
the CPSU in the military sphere. These laws, however, were not 
immutable and could change with the emergence of new military 
technologies and new operational concepts. 



657 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Joseph V. Stalin, general secretary of the party between 1922 
and 1953, believed in the existence of five "permanently operat- 
ing factors": the stability of the rear, the morale of the army, the 
quantity and quality of divisions, the armaments of the armed 
forces, and the organizational ability of the commanders. These 
factors served as forerunners of the laws of war that were in force 
in 1989. Because Stalin's permanently operating factors did not 
take nuclear weapons into account, by the 1960s Soviet military 
political writers had largely discounted them. A new set of laws, 
taking into account new weapons, the new strategic environment, 
and the probability that future war would be mainly nuclear, did 
not appear until 1972, with the publication of Colonel Vasilii E. 
Savkin's The Basic Principles of Operational Art and Tactics. Savkin's 
four laws of war in the nuclear era specified four factors upon which 
the course and outcome of a war waged with unlimited use of all 
means of conflict depended. First, he said it depended on the corre- 
lation of available military forces; second, on the correlation of the 
overall military potential of each side; third, on the political con- 
tent of the war; and fourth, on the correlation of the moral-political 
capabilities (see Glossary) and the psychological capabilities of the 
people and armies of the combatants. 

In 1977 the Soviet Military Encyclopedia refined and augmented 
Savkin's laws and listed six laws of war that the 1984 edition of 
Marxist-Leninist Teaching on War and the Army reiterated almost ver- 
batim. According to the most recent set of laws, the course and 
outcome of war depended on the following factors: the political goals 
of the war, which had to be just and revolutionary; and the corre- 
lation of the economic forces, scientific potentials, moral-political 
forces, and military forces of the warring sides. Yet another law, 
added in the 1984 edition of Marxist- Leninist Teaching on War and 
the Army, stressed the "dependence of the development and changes 
in the methods of warfare on quantitative and qualitative changes 
in military technology and on the moral and combat qualities of 
the military personnel." 

Since Savkin first formulated his laws of war in 1972, a reorder- 
ing of priorities has occurred. Savkin put the strictly military, 
primarily nuclear capabilities in first place. In 1977 and 1984, 
however, they occupied last place, with political goals in first place. 
The 1984 edition reflected the realization that new weapons and 
new strategies could revolutionize future warfare and that high stan- 
dards of training and combat readiness of military personnel would 
assume more importance than before. 

In addition to the laws of war just listed, which mainly influ- 
enced the course of war, Marxist-Leninist thought ostensibly has 
discovered the "law of objective victory," which predetermined 



658 



Soviet and American officials observing the detonation of 
a Soviet SS-12 missile in compliance with the Intermediate- Range 

Nuclear Forces Treaty 
Courtesy United States On-Site Inspection Agency 

the outcome of war and expressed the "historical inevitability of the 
triumph of the new over the old/' That is, victory would go to the 
side that represented the new, more progressive socioeconomic sys- 
tem and that used the country's potential more effectively. Soviet 
military-political writers often cited Soviet victory in World War 
II as historic proof that no force in the world was capable of stop- 
ping the progress of a socialist society. Soviet military theorists also 
have invoked the experience of World War II to prove the superi- 
ority of a socialist economy in supplying weapons and war materiel. 
They have stressed Soviet ability to produce sophisticated military 
technology. "Victory will be with the countries of the world socialist 
system," Soviet military writers announced confidendy in 1968, be- 
cause "they have the latest weapons." In 1984 Colonel General 
Dmitrii A. Volkogonov, chief editor of the 1984 edition of Marxist- 
Leninist Teaching on War and the Army, made the relationship between 
weapons and victory even more specific when he wrote that "the 
attainment of victory is directly dependent on the availability and 
sufficient quantity of modern means of warfare." 

The Party and Military Doctrine and Policy 

Marxist-Leninist teaching on war and the armed forces defined 



659 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

the essence of wars, their origins, and the laws governing the con- 
duct of war. In developing Soviet military doctrine and policy, the 
CPSU relied on this teaching and on its forecasts of the nature of 
future wars, as well as on the concepts and weapons proposals for- 
mulated by Soviet military science. Military doctrine was the party 
line on military affairs. It defined the potential adversaries, the na- 
ture of future wars, the force requirements, the general direction 
of military development, the preparation of the country for war, 
and even the type of weapons needed to fight a war. The party's 
military policy defined the political aims of the Soviet state and 
proposed concrete measures for developing and strengthening the 
state's military might by improving the organization and the ar- 
maments of the armed forces. 

Soviet military theorists asserted that military doctrine had a 
military-political and a military-technical component and that doc- 
trine overlapped with military science and strategy. Marxist- 
Leninist teaching shaped the political aspect of doctrine, which de- 
fined the party's overriding military-political goals and was by far 
the more important of the two components. The technical dimen- 
sion of military doctrine dealt with available means and capabili- 
ties, as well as with future technologies, and drew on the findings 
of Soviet military science. In its concern with capabilities, the tech- 
nical aspect of doctrine also overlapped with the technical compo- 
nent of military policy and with military strategy. The latter 
coordinated technical means and methods with military concepts 
for the attainment of political goals. 

Soviet leaders maintained that Soviet military doctrine always 
had been defensive, yet because it favored an offensive strategy 
and stressed the need to achieve victory, Western analysts have 
often termed Soviet military doctrine offensive. The acquisition 
of nuclear weapons by the Soviet armed forces not only caused dis- 
agreement over whether nuclear war could be a continuation of 
politics by violent means but also introduced divergence into Soviet 
views on the role nuclear weapons could play in deterring or fight- 
ing a war. Soviet military strategists appeared to endorse both 
nuclear deterrence and nuclear war-fighting (see Glossary) but 
placed a greater stress on war-fighting. Even the adoption of con- 
ventional options and the downgrading of the military utility of 
nuclear weapons by some military leaders in the 1980s did not re- 
move the doctrinal requirement to fight and prevail in a nuclear war. 

Evolution of Military Doctrine 

Soviet military theorists first formulated a uniform military doc- 
trine in the 1920s under the influence of both Lenin's teachings 



660 



Military Doctrine and Strategic Concerns 

on the defense of the socialist homeland and the writings of 
Mikhail V. Frunze, a prominent Bolshevik (see Glossary) com- 
mander in the Civil War (1918-21) and a military theoretician. 
Frunze considered the basic conditions for the vitality of doctrine 
to be, first, its uniformity, i.e., doctrine should be the same for 
all services of the armed forces, and, second, "its conformity with 
the state's objectives and the resources at its disposal." 

Since Frunze, Soviet doctrinal views on the nature and likeli- 
hood of future war have evolved as Soviet theorists have attempted 
to adapt doctrine to the changing nature of future war, to the shifting 
alignment of forces in the world, and to changes in the domestic 
economy and in the combat potential of the Soviet armed forces. 

The most important changes in Soviet views on the nature of 
war came after World War II. At that time, Stalin added the con- 
cept of the "two camps" — two mutually irreconcilable coalitions — 
and their impending worldwide clash to the traditional Soviet con- 
cepts of capitalist encirclement (see Glossary) and inevitability of 
capitalist attack. In February 1956, the Twentieth Party Congress 
modified the idea of inevitability when Khrushchev declared that 
a world war with capitalism was no longer "fatalistically inevitable. ' ' 

Doctrinal views on the methods of fighting a future world war 
also have changed significantly since the end of World War II. 
Stalin, who for most of his rule did not have a nuclear arsenal, 
envisioned future war as a fierce combined arms struggle in Europe. 
As both the United States and the Soviet armed forces in Europe 
acquired nuclear weapons in the 1950s, Soviet views gradually 
changed. In 1960 and 1961, Khrushchev tried to impose the con- 
cept of nuclear deterrence on the military. Nuclear deterrence holds 
that the reason for having nuclear weapons is to discourage their 
use by a potential enemy. With each side deterred from war because 
of the threat of its escalation into a nuclear conflict, Khrushchev 
believed, "peaceful coexistence" (see Glossary) with capitalism 
would become permanent and allow the inherent superiority of so- 
cialism to emerge in economic and cultural competition with the 
West. 

Khrushchev hoped that exclusive reliance on the nuclear fire- 
power of the newly created Strategic Rocket Forces would remove 
the need for increased defense expenditures (see Strategic Rocket 
Forces, ch. 18). He also sought to use nuclear deterrence to justify 
his massive troop cuts; his downgrading of the Ground Forces, tradi- 
tionally the "fighting arm" of the Soviet armed forces; and his 
plans to replace bombers with missiles and the surface fleet with 
nuclear missile submarines. 



661 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Khrushchev's attempt to introduce a nuclear doctrine limited 
to deterrence into Soviet military thought misfired. Discussion of 
nuclear war in the first authoritative Soviet monograph on strate- 
gy since the 1920s, Marshal Vasilii D. Sokolovskii's Military Strate- 
gy (published in 1962, 1963, and 1968) and in the 1968 edition of 
Marxism-Leninism on War and the Army, focused upon the use of 
nuclear weapons for fighting rather than for deterring a war. Should 
such a war break out, both sides would pursue the most decisive 
aims with the most forceful means and methods. Intercontinental 
ballistic missiles and aircraft would deliver massed nuclear strikes 
on the enemy's military and civilian objectives. The war would 
assume an unprecedented geographical scope, but Soviet military 
writers argued that the use of nuclear weapons in the initial period 
of the war would decide the course and outcome of the war as a 
whole. Both in doctrine and in strategy, the nuclear weapon reigned 
supreme. 

After Khrushchev's ouster in 1964, Soviet doctrine began to con- 
sider the new United States concept of "flexible response," i.e., 
a graduated response to aggression on several levels, beginning with 
conventional arms. In the mid-1960s, Soviet military thinkers al- 
lowed for the possibility of a phase of conventional warfare preceding 
a general nuclear war. Another adjustment also occurred in the 
mid-1960s, as doctrine evolved to maintain that a world war need 
not inevitably escalate to an intercontinental nuclear exchange be- 
tween the Soviet Union and the United States. Soviet doctrine al- 
lowed for the possibility of avoiding such an exchange altogether 
and limiting nuclear strikes to specific theaters of war. Soviet mili- 
tary strategists held that nuclear war could be fought in and con- 
fined to Western and Central Europe and that both United States 
and Soviet territory might escape nuclear devastation. Finally, after 
1967, when the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) offi- 
cially adopted the "flexible response" concept and began to struc- 
ture its forces accordingly, Soviet doctrine began to consider the 
possibility of fighting an entire war with conventional arms. It did, 
however, allow for the likelihood of the adversary's escalating to 
the use of nuclear weapons. 

Military Doctrine in the Late 1980s 

The 1970s and 1980s were a period of questioning and transition 
in Soviet doctrine and strategy. Soviet military doctrine continued 
to assume that the Soviet Union could fight and prevail in a nuclear 
war and that Soviet strategic nuclear missiles could influence a 
war's course and outcome. Nevertheless, prominent military figures 
voiced concern about the military efficacy of nuclear weapons, 



662 




SS-13 intercontinental ballistic missile 
Courtesy United States Department of Defense 



among them the former chief of the General Staff, Marshal of the 
Soviet Union Nikolai V. Ogarkov; Colonel General Makhmut A. 
Gareev, author of a monograph on military theoretician Frunze; 
and Volkogonov, chief editor of Marxist- Leninist Teaching on War 
and the Army. They each expressed reservations about whether a 
world war of the future could be fought and won with nuclear 
weapons. Ogarkov, in particular, advanced the revolutionary view 
that a twenty-first-century battlefield might be dominated by non- 
nuclear, high- technology armaments and a global war could be 
fought with conventional weapons alone. 

In the mid- to late 1980s, CPSU leaders and some military offi- 
cials began to focus on the political aspects of Soviet national secu- 
rity and deemphasized its military aspect. They advocated a new 
military doctrine based on the defensive concept of "reasonable suffi- 
ciency" and on a military potential "sufficient for safeguarding the 
security of the country" but not adequate for launching offensives, 
especially surprise attacks on an adversary. In 1987 some military 
spokesmen also mentioned the possible reformulation of Soviet mili- 
tary doctrine. The chief of the General Staff, Marshal of the Soviet 
Union Sergei F. Akhromeev, and the minister of defense, Marshal 
of the Soviet Union Dmitrii T. Iazov, declared that a new Soviet 
military doctrine was being developed in accordance with the prin- 
ciples of the "new thinking" in foreign and military policy. In May 
1987, the Warsaw Pact's Consultative Committee met in East Ber- 
lin and adopted a document on a defense-oriented military doctrine. 
In particular, the document called for reduction of conventional ar- 
maments in Europe to a level that could not support offensive oper- 
ations. 

When asked to explain the purportedly new concepts of war 
prevention and military sufficiency, however, Warsaw Pact and 



663 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Soviet spokesmen mentioned an emphasis on quality, high com- 
bat readiness, and decisive counteroperations, in short, a victory 
orientation that a purely defensive doctrine based on "reasonable 
sufficiency" could not support. The contradiction at the heart of 
Soviet doctrine, which claimed to be defensive but posited war 
scenarios calling for applying force offensively, damaged Soviet 
credibility in the West and led to conflicting views on Soviet in- 
tentions. Many Western analysts, among them William T. Lee 
and Richard F. Staar, continued to interpret Soviet intentions as 
"very aggressive." Others, such as Michael MccGwire and Ray- 
mond L. Garthoff, who focused on the Soviet viewpoint, saw the 
Soviet Union as being constrained by doctrinal requirements and 
threat assessments to adopt a force posture adequate for fighting 
a world war with both nuclear and conventional weapons. 

In the late 1980s, a consensus emerged in the West on the prob- 
able Soviet doctrine. Western specialists believed that the Soviet 
Union would not start a nuclear war without provocation. 

They also believed, however, that, should a war start, the Soviet 
Union would strive for victory and for protection of its territory 
from enemy strikes. Western specialists also held that the Soviet 
leadership would prefer to fight a conventional war in Europe and, 
should such a war escalate, would try to limit a nuclear war to Cen- 
tral and Western Europe. A protracted conventional conflict in the 
shadow of nuclear weapons, possibly worldwide, was another likely 
option. Many Western analysts also thought that, despite having 
in 1982 unilaterally forsworn the first use of nuclear weapons, the 
Soviet Union retained the option of a surprise first strike against 
the United States. They maintained that Soviet leaders would con- 
sider this option if they believed they could thereby win the war 
and limit damage to the homeland. 

Doctrine and Weapons Programs 

The relation between the military-political and military-technical 
aspects of Soviet doctrine and weapons programs was direct and 
unmistakable. A direct link existed between the military-political 
component of doctrine, operational requirements, weapons pro- 
grams, and force deployments. Doctrinal requirements could remain 
unfulfilled for years, but they usually were met as technologies be- 
came available. Hence, a knowledge of the military-political com- 
ponent of Soviet doctrine was helpful for forecasting the direction 
of Soviet military technology. 

The doctrine developed by the Soviet Union in the early 1960s 
bore little relation to actual conditions, and the Soviet Union need- 
ed fifteen years to develop the weapons described in the 1962 edition 



664 



Military Doctrine and Strategic Concerns 

of Sokolovskii's Military Strategy. In October 1986, Ogarkov wrote 
that the Soviet Union required an industry capable of solving the 
most difficult defense-equipment problems and producing the 
sophisticated weapons needed to win a war without using nuclear 
weapons. He projected a future requirement to develop new equip- 
ment and weapons, a requirement that Soviet industry might not 
be able to fulfill for many years. And, should the party's doctrinal 
view of a future war differ from Ogarkov' s, this requirement might 
never be translated into actual weapons programs. 

When formulating their goals for new, important weapons sys- 
tems, Soviet leaders considered both doctrinal pronouncements on 
the nature of future wars and estimates of the external military threat 
supplied by the General Staff (see General Staff, ch. 18). The ser- 
vices of the armed forces reviewed their missions and drew up 
weapons acquisition plans in cooperation with research institutes 
and design bureaus (see Research, Development, and Production 
Organizations, ch. 16). The General Staff prepared a consolidated 
plan, which it forwarded to the Defense Council to be recommended 
for the Politburo's approval (see Defense Council, ch. 18). Although 
the professional expertise of the military influenced the weapons 
request that filled a doctrinal requirement, the party made the final 
decision on the weapons to be produced. 

Military Policy of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union 

In addition to developing military doctrine, the CPSU developed 
military policy, which was much broader than doctrine. Whereas 
doctrine contains the guiding principles on the essence of future 
wars and on the methods and weapons for fighting them, military 
policy guides the development and strengthening of the state's mili- 
tary might through improving the organization and armaments of 
the armed forces so that they can be used successfully to achieve 
the state's political goals. Military policy is closely linked to mili- 
tary strategy. Policy defines the objectives of war and focuses the 
attention of strategy on the tasks to be performed. Strategy's 
dependence on policy increased with the acquisition of nuclear 
weapons, the use of which was controlled by the political leader- 
ship. Like military doctrine, Soviet military policy had two com- 
ponents: military-political and military-technical. Soviet military 
theorists frequently referred to these components simply as military- 
political policy and military- technical policy. 

According to the Soviet understanding of the term, military- 
political policy defined the political aims of the state, evaluated the 
international environment and the military potentials of prob- 
able adversaries, and established guidelines for Soviet military 



665 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

involvement in the world. It both overlapped and supported Soviet 
foreign policy. Military-political policy took into account the eco- 
nomic, social, scientific, and specifically military capabilities of the 
Soviet state and was used by the party to determine the optimal 
directions for structuring the armed forces and for strengthening 
the economic- technical base of the state's defense. Concerned about 
the integrity and security of the state, the party could modify its 
military policy as the interests of the state changed. Soviet spokes- 
men nevertheless stressed the continuity and consistency of the 
party's military policy and of the military-political course of the 
Soviet Union. 

The Soviet military-industrial complex was run according to the 
military- technical component of the party's military policy, which 
determined the cycles of military modernization. According to 
Soviet sources, major weapons development programs were car- 
ried out every ten to twelve years. As in doctrine, military recom- 
mendations influenced policy, but the party retained complete 
control over the formulation of a uniform military-technical pol- 
icy and over its implementation by government organizations. 

Military Science 

Although the party formulated doctrine and policy, military 
science — the study and practice of armed conflict — was the preserve 
of military professionals. According to Soviet military theorists, 
military science was a system of knowledge dealing directly with 
the nature and laws of armed conflict, the preparation of the armed 
forces and the country for war, and the methods of waging war. 
It comprised both the theory of military affairs and its practical 
applications in combat. Military scientists studied and defined the 
laws of armed conflict, which were said to be objective, i.e., in- 
dependent of human consciousness. They also formulated subjec- 
tive interpretations of these laws, known as principles of military 
art. Unlike doctrine, military science permitted differing views and 
even debates among military professionals concerning the nature 
and methods of armed combat. 

The principal components of military science are military art, 
subdivided into military strateg operational art, and tactics; the 
command and control of troop,;; the structuring (or development) 
of the armed forces; training and indoctrination; military economics; 
military geography and history; and the increasingly important 
military- technical sciences, such as artillery science, naval science, 
cybernetics, topography, and geodesy. A main component of mili- 
tary science is military art, which focuses on the theory and prac- 
tice of conducting military actions on land, at sea, and in the air. 



666 



Yankee-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile 
submarine under way 
Courtesy United States Navy 

Reputedly, scientific forecasting is one of the most important 
functions of military science. Computer modeling and operations 
research are used to predict the military-technical nature of future 
wars and the evolution of military technology and of military af- 
fairs in general. Forecasting provides valuable input into military 
doctrine and can cause modification of doctrinal pronouncements 
on the type of war the Soviet Union may have to fight in years 
to come. Another key function of military science is long-term plan- 
ning for development and deployment of the most effective weapons 
for future conflicts. 

Like doctrine and policy, Soviet military science traced its ori- 
gins to Lenin's teachings on the defense of the socialist motherland. 
Soviet military theorists credited Lenin not only with laying the foun- 
dation of Soviet military doctrine and policy but also with founding 
Soviet military science. Lenin also has played a prominent role in 
developing Soviet military strategy. Lenin's belief that political so- 
lutions would promote the spread of communism better than would 
military ones and that armed conflict was merely a continuation of 
politics by forcible means relegated military science to a subordinate 
role. Thus Soviet military science was not autonomous but was, in 
fact, a handmaiden of the party's military doctrine and policy. 



667 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Laws of Armed Conflict 

Soviet military scientists studied and defined objective laws of 
armed conflict that focused on the military struggle. These laws 
represented the professional military consensus on the best methods 
of waging combat in order to achieve victory on the battlefield. 
Although Soviet military theorists maintained that the laws of armed 
conflict ' 'express the internal, essential, necessary, stable relation- 
ships between the phenomena manifested in the course of an armed 
conflict," the laws were far from immutable. They retained their 
validity until Soviet military thinkers discovered other laws that 
provided better solutions to the same problems. Thus the laws of 
armed conflict defined in the 1970s that relied on massive strikes 
with nuclear weapons for the solution of most military tasks ap- 
peared outdated in the 1980s, when the Soviet military was em- 
phasizing conventional options. 

Two laws of armed conflict, however, purportedly remained un- 
affected by technological change. They were the law of dependence 
of the forms of armed combat on the material basis of the battle 
and operation, i.e., on people and equipment, and the law stating 
that the side with the greater combat power will always be favored 
in any batde or operation. 

Principles of Military Art 

The principles of military art are the basic ideas for the organi- 
zation and conduct of battles, operations, and wars, and they can 
be applied on tactical, operational, and strategic levels. These prin- 
ciples evolve over time: some lose their significance, others acquire 
a new content, and new principles emerge. The 1978 Soviet Mili- 
tary Encyclopedia listed the following eleven principles of military art: 
high combat readiness; surprise and striving to seize and retain 
the initiative; full use of all means and methods of combat; close 
cooperation among the services, also known as the principle (or 
concept) of combined arms; concentration of essential efforts; simul- 
taneous destruction of the enemy to the entire depth of the enemy's 
deployment; full use of the moral-political factor; strict and unin- 
terrupted troop control; steadfastness and decisiveness; compre- 
hensive security of combat activity; and timely restoration of 
reserves. These principles guided Soviet commanders in planning, 
preparing, and waging armed combat. 

Military Art 

Military art is the theory and practice of preparing and con- 
ducting military actions on land, at sea, and in the air. Its three 
components — military strategy, operational art, and tactics — are 



668 



Military Doctrine and Strategic Concerns 

interconnected and mutually supporting. Military strategy is con- 
cerned with the conduct of the war as a whole. 

Operational art deals with the preparation and conduct of mili- 
tary actions within geographical limits of a theater of military oper- 
ations {teatr voennykh deistvii — TVD; see Glossary). Operational art 
is employed to achieve the goals set under strategy. It links stra- 
tegy and tactics, in that tactical missions are assigned to support 
theater operations. Military tactics defines combat methods for the 
battlefield. Although it is subordinate to operational art and strategy, 
tactics can influence both the operational and the strategic levels 
of war. 

Military Strategy 

Military strategy is the most important component of military 
art. The study of strategy was an important part of Soviet military 
life, and all services of the Soviet armed forces followed the same 
military strategy. Strategists investigated the nature of war and its 
conduct, as well as the conduct of strategic operations. They de- 
fined the missions of the armed forces and specified the resources 
needed to accomplish them. Soviet strategists also studied the capa- 
bilities and strategies of probable adversaries and devised measures 
to counter them. Military strategy and military science supplied 
policy makers with the results of military- scientific research on the 
best methods for attaining a war's objectives. At the same time, 
the recommendations of military strategy and military science 
helped shape military doctrine, the principles of which then guided 
strategy in the conduct of war. 

Nuclear Strategy in the 1950s 

After the explosions of the first Soviet atomic device in 1 949 and 
the Soviet hydrogen bomb in 1953, the Soviet armed forces ac- 
quired nuclear weapons. Also introduced in the 1950s were ballistic- 
and cruise-missile technologies, jet engines, and artificial earth satel- 
lites, as well as computers and automated control systems. These 
important events were known in the Soviet Union as the "revolu- 
tion in military affairs." Of all the new developments, nuclear 
weapons most affected Soviet strategy. Nuclear weapons altered the 
nature and methods of armed struggle on the strategic level because 
they could accomplish the military's strategic tasks without opera- 
tional art and tactics. Not until Stalin's death in 1953, however, 
could the Soviet military begin exploring the full strategic potential 
of the new weapons. Although he had pushed for the develop- 
ment of the "bomb," Stalin played down its importance and did 



669 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

not encourage the military to formulate a new strategy incorporating 
nuclear weapons. 

Transition to a nuclear strategy began in the mid-1950s, when 
Soviet military thinkers began recognizing the importance of sur- 
prise, of the initial period of war, and of using nuclear strikes to 
determine the course and outcome of a war. In February 1955, 
Marshal Pavel A. Rotmistrov published in the Soviet journal 
Voennaia mysV (Military Thought) a ground-breaking article on 
"surprise." He stressed the importance of landing the first, 
"preemptive" nuclear blow to destroy the enemy's weapons when 
the latter was preparing a surprise attack. Since the mid-1950s, 
the concept of preempting an enemy's nuclear weapons has be- 
come firmly entrenched in Soviet military thought. 

As the Soviet military came to view nuclear weapons as particu- 
larly suitable for general war, it needed a strategy for their use. 
In 1957 a series of military seminars at the highest level helped 
leaders develop the elements of a new nuclear strategy. A group 
of Soviet military strategists under the direction of Marshal Sokolov- 
skii continued the work of the seminars. In 1962 they published 
Military Strategy, the first Soviet treatise on strategy since 1927. 

The Sokolovskii Era, 1962-68 

In January 1960, Khrushchev unveiled the new nuclear stra- 
tegy in a speech to the Supreme Soviet. According to Khrushchev, 
this strategy's aim was deterring war rather than fighting it (see 
Evolution of Military Doctrine, this ch.). Despite Khrushchev's 
emphasis on deterrence and reductions in military manpower, 
Sokolovskii 's Military Strategy focused on apocalyptic scenarios for 
fighting a world war with nuclear weapons and stressed the need 
for mass armies. The idea of preemption resurfaced, this time on 
an intercontinental basis, because the Soviet Union had acquired 
nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and could 
threaten the territory of the United States. Sokolovskii maintained 
that the Soviet side had to "frustrate" an enemy coalition's attack 
by delivering massive nuclear strikes on the enemy's territories. 
These strikes would destroy not only the enemy's weapons but also 
the enemy's will to continue the war, thus limiting the damage from 
a retaliatory strike. 

This view of nuclear strategy prevailed during most of the 1960s. 
Soon after the publication of the third edition of his Military Strategy 
in 1968, however, Sokolovskii wrote with an eye on the future: 
"Military affairs are entering or have already entered the next stage 
of their development, and apparently it is necessary to introduce 



670 



Military Doctrine and Strategic Concerns 

essential changes into military art." Such changes began to occur 
in the 1960s and continued through the 1970s and 1980s. 

New Strategic Options, 1968-89 

Beginning in the mid-1960s, the Soviet military leadership tried 
to add new, less destructive, strategic options, not only as a response 
to NATO's "flexible response" concept but also because the leaders 
began to doubt the possibility of a true victory in an all-out nuclear 
war. Although most military writings upheld the obligatory belief 
in socialism's victory, doubters hinted that not only imperialism 
but also socialism could perish in a nuclear holocaust. 

The search for options intensified in the 1970s, after the Soviet 
Union had achieved rough nuclear parity with the United States, 
thereby making a nuclear war with the West less likely. If escala- 
tion had been imminent, the Soviet Union had the capability — 
accurate and reliable ICBMs with multiple warheads — to limit its 
strikes to the adversary's weapons, thus reducing the level of vio- 
lence. Other options examined in the 1970s and 1980s included 
a nuclear war limited to Europe, a combined arms offensive with 
both nuclear and conventional weapons, and a completely conven- 
tional strategic operation in Europe, where Soviet nuclear weapons 
deterring Western use of nuclear weapons. 

In 1989 two possible future strategic options — space warfare and 
ballistic missile defense — had not been officially endorsed but were 
available to Soviet planners. Since the 1957 launching of Sputnik 
(see Glossary), the Soviet Union had been interested in the mili- 
tary use of space and had conducted research in this field. Moreover, 
in late 1987 Gorbachev admitted that for years the Soviet Union 
had been conducting basic research on a space-based defense against 
ballistic missiles, similar to the United States Strategic Defense In- 
itiative (SDI). 

Yet even in 1989, the addition of new strategic options did not 
alter the basic nuclear war scenario of the 1960s. Two monographs 
published in 1985 and 1986 by Gareev and Lieutenant General 
Pavel A. Zhilin, respectively, reaffirmed the increased importance 
of surprise during the initial period of a nuclear war. According 
to these specialists, such a "surprise nuclear strike," if successful, 
could determine both the course and the outcome of a war. Soviet 
belief that the United States was acquiring nuclear missiles capa- 
ble of delivering a surprise strike and was developing an antimis- 
sile shield to protect United States territory from Soviet retaliation 
contributed to the Soviet military's perception of the growing role 
of strategic surprise. 



671 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Operational Art 

Operational art involves the translation of strategic goals into 
military objectives in TVDs by conducting decisive theater cam- 
paigns. Although a single military strategy existed for the Soviet 
armed forces, each of the five armed services had its own opera- 
tional art and tactics. Three enduring concepts that have shaped 
Soviet operational art since the 1920s have been the concept of the 
TVD, the principle of combined arms, and the theory of deep offen- 
sive operations. 

TVDs divided the world into manageable military-geographic 
sectors. In 1983 the Soviet Military Encyclopedic Dictionary defined 
a TVD as part of a continent or an ocean "within the boundaries 
of which are deployed strategic groupings of the armed forces and 
within which military operations are conducted." Around its 
periphery the Soviet military recognized five continental TVDs with 
their surrounding seas: the Northwestern, Western, Southwestern, 
Southern, and Far Eastern. Oceanic TVDs were located in the 
Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, and Arctic oceans (see fig. 27). 

The combined arms concept is a major principle of Soviet military 
art. It means that all services are integrated and coordinated to 
achieve victory in a war, an operation, or a battle. The concept ori- 
ginated in the 1920s, when Marshal of the Soviet Union Mikhail N. 
Tukhachevskii understood combined arms primarily as the cooper- 
ation between artillery and infantry in land warfare. Since then, 
as the Soviet armed forces have added new weapons systems such 
as tanks, aircraft, submarines, and ballistic and cruise missiles, com- 
bined arms acquired a new meaning as it began to signify the in- 
teraction of all services of the armed forces to attain strategic goals. 

The deep offensive operation theory evolved in the 1920s and 
1930s as an outgrowth of the combined arms concept. The deep 
offensive operation called for the destruction of the enemy to a sub- 
stantial depth of its deployment, for the use of mobile groups in 
the enemy's rear, for a breakthrough of tactical defense, and for 
encirclement and subsequent destruction of enemy troops. Dur- 
ing World War II, Soviet commanders stressed coordination of 
troops, operational maneuver, and operational breakthrough, as 
well as the necessity of conducting an operation with combined 
forces on several fronts. New types of operations emerged, such 
as air and antiair operations, and combined operations of the 
Ground Forces, Air Forces, and Naval Forces. In the 1950s, the 
increased mobility of armor and the striking power of nuclear 
weapons bolstered the concept of the deep offensive operation. 

Nuclear weapons produced fundamental operational changes. 
The scope and depth of an operational offensive grew, and its vio- 
lence intensified. Soviet military thinkers believed that they could 



672 



Military Doctrine and Strategic Concerns 



achieve a decisive victory by delivering preemptive nuclear strikes 
on objectives deep in the enemy's rear and, subsequently, by en- 
circling, cutting off, and destroying the enemy's troops with nuclear 
and conventional munitions. Soviet military writers soon began 
to point out, however, that radioactive contamination, fires, and 
floods caused by massive nuclear strikes could interfere with the 
success of operations. 

In the 1970s, the Soviet Union built up its conventional forces 
in Europe and adopted new operational concepts for the conduct 
of a deep offensive operation using both conventional and nuclear 
weapons. A conventional phase was to precede the nuclear phase. 
By the early 1980s, the Soviet military had developed an all- 
conventional option for a deep offensive operation in a TVD (see 
Offensive and Defensive Strategic Missions, this ch.). 

Tactics 

Tactics is the aspect of military art concerned with the prepara- 
tion and conduct of offensive and defensive combat actions by ele- 
ments of the armed forces on land, in the air, and at sea. Soviet 
military writers distinguish four basic tactical combat actions: 
offense, the meeting engagement (in which both belligerents meet 
while advancing), defense, and withdrawal. They view defense as 
a temporary action, for only offense can bring about a complete 
rout of the enemy and victory. 

In the early 1960s, nuclear weapons became the "basic means 
of destruction on the field of battle." Soviet tacticians believed that 
nuclear strikes during an engagement would help the Soviet armed 
forces to seize and retain the initiative on a tactical level and achieve 
victory in battle. The new emphasis on nuclear weapons led to 
changes in tactical concepts. Instead of massive concentration of 
forces on the main direction of attack, theorists advocated concen- 
tration of nuclear strikes and maneuver by troops and by nuclear 
missiles. 

Soviet military theorists came to realize that use of nuclear 
weapons by both belligerents could complicate offensive tactical 
combat by slowing down the Soviet advance while strengthening 
the enemy's defense. Because increased mobility and high rates 
of advance formed the most important Soviet operational and tac- 
tical principles, the Soviet military began to perceive nuclear 
weapons as problematic. Thus, in the late 1960s and the 1970s, 
Soviet military planners began to reorient tactics away from reli- 
ance on nuclear weapons toward reliance on new conventional 
weapons. Concepts such as the concentration of forces on the main 



673 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 




674 



Military Doctrine and Strategic Concerns 

axis, partial victory, and economy of force again assumed their 
prenuclear importance. 

Soviet tactics in the 1980s has experienced a resurgence, in part 
because improved conventional weapons with greater ranges and 
accuracies became available. Also, the 1979 Soviet invasion of 
Afghanistan provided a training ground for tactical conventional 
combat in mountainous and desert terrain and drew the atten- 
tion of Soviet military theorists to the importance of tactics in 
warfare. Two revised editions of Lieutenant General Vasilii G. 
Reznichenko's Tactics were published in the 1980s: one in 1984 
and a revised and augmented one in 1987. Reznichenko described 
tactics as the most dynamic component of contemporary military 
art, a component that could influence the operational and even the 
strategic levels of war. In the 1987 edition of Tactics, Reznichenko 
included new defensive concepts but emphasized the offensive, sup- 
ported by air superiority, fire superiority, and electronic warfare. 
He favored conventional rather than nuclear preemption, for, if 
used preemptively, long-range precision-guided munitions could 
predetermine the outcome of a combined arms battle. 

Strategic Missions of the Armed Forces 

The General Staff had the responsibility for formulating the stra- 
tegic missions of the five services of the Soviet armed forces. The 
Soviet military has defined a strategic mission as one "whose ful- 
fillment in the course of an armed conflict leads to an abrupt change 
in the operational strategic situation .... Successful accomplish- 
ment of a strategic mission usually results in attainment of numerical 
superiority over the enemy, in seizure of important areas and in- 
stallations on his territory .... Successful accomplishment of a 
series of strategic missions leads to the attainment of intermediate 
and ultimate strategic goals." Because the ultimate strategic goal 
of war is victory over the adversary, the successful accomplishment 
of strategic missions is indispensable. 

The General Staff had the responsibility for assessing external 
threats and drawing up Soviet war plans. It reconciled its plans 
with Soviet military doctrine and policy. The General Staff also 
determined the nature of strategic missions, as well as the weapons 
used and the size of forces needed to accomplish these missions 
(see table 53, Appendix A). 

Traditionally, the Soviet military has structured its armed forces 
offensively, on the basis of worst-case threat assessments. The 
primacy of offense over defense was challenged in the nuclear age, 
when strategic offense was often combined with strategic defense. 
In 1989, in spite of the new doctrinal emphasis on defense, most 



675 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

branches of the Soviet armed forces, such as the Strategic Rocket 
Forces, the Air Forces, the Naval Forces, and the Ground Forces, 
still had mainly offensive missions. The Ground Forces played a 
leading role in the combined arms strategic operation in a TVD. 
By contrast, the Air Defense Forces were to carry out active defense 
of the homeland by destroying the enemy's weapons and aircraft, 
whereas Civil Defense was to protect the country from nuclear 
devastation. In the 1980s, the Soviet military reinforced the com- 
bined arms concept on the strategic level by reorganizing and re- 
structuring the Soviet armed forces. 

Threat Assessments and Force Requirements 

Since the nuclear era began, worst-case threat assessments have 
dominated Soviet military thinking. As a result, even during the 
years of detente and strategic arms control, Soviet military policy 
and doctrine have called for disproportionately large forces for the 
fulfillment of strategic missions, and Soviet military planners have 
drawn up plans in response to doctrinal requirements. 

In the 1980s, Soviet worst-case scenarios centered on the mod- 
ernization of the United States ICBMs, on United States deploy- 
ment of the Trident ballistic missile submarine armed with 
long-range, accurate nuclear missiles, and on United States procure- 
ment of low-flying ground-, sea-, and air-launched cruise missiles. 
Soviet spokesmen also persisted in portraying SDI as an offensive 
system and claimed that it would enable the United States to launch 
a first strike against Soviet territory with impunity. 

Dmitrii Iazov, appointed minister of defense in 1987, adopted 
a contradictory position on Soviet military planning and threat as- 
sessment. Implying that the Soviet Union was willing to scale down 
its military expenditures and would modify its military doctrine 
and strategy, Iazov publicly endorsed reductions in the nuclear and 
conventional armaments of both the United States and the Soviet 
Union to a level commensurate with a defense-oriented doctrine 
and strategy. Yet he retained the traditional worst-case scenario 
when he called for a robust Soviet nuclear capability that could 
punish an attacker "even under the most unfavorable circum- 
stances." Although he relied on "reasonable sufficiency" rather 
than on superiority, Iazov also defined "reasonable sufficiency" 
in traditional terms as the ability to "reliably guarantee the defense 
of the Socialist Community" with armed forces structured and 
equipped for offensive action. 

Offensive and Defensive Strategic Missions 

Traditionally, the overall mission of the Soviet armed forces has 
been to deter war in peacetime and to defend the Soviet Union 



676 



Military Doctrine and Strategic Concerns 

and the socialist states allied to it in wartime. Should war break 
out, the Soviet armed forces were expected to fight decisively and 
to achieve victory. Soviet unified military strategy, common to all 
services, was primarily offensive, and defense was only a temporary 
expedient. The primacy of strategic offense over strategic defense 
appeared indisputable. Since the advent of nuclear weapons, 
however, strategic offense and defense have become intertwined, 
and offensive and defensive strategic missions frequendy coalesced. 
The combined arms concept was expressed in this growing inter- 
dependence between offense and defense in Soviet unified strategy 
because many strategic missions involved overlap and cooperation 
and would be performed by more than one service (see Military 
Art, this ch.). The Soviet military envisaged most strategic opera- 
tions, both offensive and defensive, as mutually reinforcing com- 
ponents of a single strategic plan. In the 1980s, Soviet strategists 
believed that the synergistic effect of combined arms would maxi- 
mize the armed forces' potential to achieve unambiguous victory. 

To reinforce the combined arms concept on a strategic level, the 
Soviet military reorganized the Soviet armed forces. It centralized 
command and control, established theater commands in TVDs 
directly responsible to the Supreme High Command, and improved 
early warning systems (see Main Military Council, ch. 18). The 
new Soviet command infrastructure would enable the Soviet mili- 
tary to change speedily from a peacetime to a wartime footing. 

Strategic Offense 

The Strategic Rocket Forces, the Naval Forces, the Air Forces, 
and the Ground Forces have had predominantly offensive missions. 
Since their founding in 1959, the Strategic Rocket Forces have been 
charged with using their intercontinental and intermediate-range 
ballistic missiles to destroy military and economic targets in the 
United States and on the Eurasian landmass in the initial period 
of war. The Strategic Rocket Forces were to preempt an enemy 
attack by launching Soviet missiles first or to prevent the destruc- 
tion of Soviet missiles by launching them soon after the enemy's 
missiles had left their silos. Thus the Soviet initial strike could be 
both offensive and defensive. In their offensive posture, the Stra- 
tegic Rocket Forces could change the correlation of forces and 
resources and tip the nuclear balance in the Soviet Union's favor. 
At the same time, should the Soviet strike succeed in destroying 
United States missiles before launch, it would prevent a United States 
nuclear strike (see Military Doctrine in the Late 1980s, this ch.). 

In the 1960s and 1970s, the Strategic Rocket Forces enjoyed an 
undisputed predominance in nuclear strategy. By the 1980s, 



677 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

however, the Soviet military appeared to have downgraded the Stra- 
tegic Rocket Forces. Soviet spokesmen, beginning with Ogarkov 
in 1981, began to refer to these forces, together with the nuclear 
Naval Forces and the Air Forces, as an integral part of a combined 
arms triad of "strategic nuclear forces." 

The Air Forces also have had an offensive-defensive mission simi- 
lar to that of the Strategic Rocket Forces. In contrast to the Stra- 
tegic Rocket Forces, however, the Air Forces' intercontinental 
capabilities had been very limited until the early 1980s. In addi- 
tion to the Tu-26 (Backfire) bomber with a largely theater-level 
use, in the mid-1980s the Soviet military deployed the intercon- 
tinental Tu-160 bomber and equipped its Tu-95 bombers with air- 
launched cruise missiles (ALCMs). Because cruise missiles could 
be conventionally armed, in the late 1980s the Air Forces were be- 
ginning to acquire a significant conventional capability for stra- 
tegic missions. 

Of all the services, the Naval Forces experienced the most dra- 
matic mission expansion after the 1960s. Their mission evolved 
from coastal defense to worldwide power projection in peacetime 
and to denial of the use of the seas to adversaries in wartime through 
the disruption of sea lines of communication. In the 1970s, the 
"father" of the modern Soviet Naval Forces, Admiral Sergei Gorsh- 
kov, had lobbied for independent strategic missions for the Naval 
Forces. Admiral Vladimir Chernavin, however, who succeeded 
Gorshkov as the Naval Forces commander in chief in 1986, ap- 
peared content to have a strong but less independent Naval Forces, 
well integrated into the traditional combined arms concept and a 
uniform, all-services strategy. The strategic nuclear mission was 
the only Naval Forces mission in which Western analysts had noted 
some retrenchment since the 1960s. In the 1960s, nuclear war was 
expected to start with a massive nuclear exchange, and strikes by 
submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) were to supplement 
the initial strike by the Strategic Rocket Forces. In the 1970s and 
1980s, when the Strategic Rocket Forces built up their counter- 
force capability, the primary strategic mission of the Naval Forces 
was to provide a secure reserve force, withheld from the initial 
nuclear strikes, and to protect this force from enemy antisubma- 
rine warfare. 

The strategic mission of the Ground Forces has been defense 
of the territorial and political integrity of the Soviet Union and its 
socialist allies and, in case of war, conducting combined arms oper- 
ations in the TVDs with the support of air, air defense, and navy 
elements. In Europe the goal of the strategic combined arms mission 



678 



Tu-26 (Backfire) strike bomber 
Courtesy United States Navy 

has been defeating NATO as quickly as possible and occupying 
Western Europe without destroying its economic base. 

Strategic Operation in a Theater of Military Operations 

The concept of the combined arms operational offensive in a 
theater of military operations (teatr voennykh deistvii — TVD) devel- 
oped in the 1920s as the theory of the deep offensive operation (see 
Military Art, this ch.). According to this theory, Soviet infantry, 
armor, and artillery would coordinate to achieve operational goals 
with operational breakthroughs and firepower. The deep offensive 
operation concept underlies the modern, expanded theater opera- 
tion, which, according to Marshal Ogarkov, is ''no longer a front 
or group of fronts, but a strategic operation in a TVD" and can 
lead directly to the achievement of strategic objectives. Since the 
mid-1970s, such an operation in the Western TVD, covering 
NATO's Central Region, was expected to be fought mainly with 
new, improved conventional weapons. Although primarily offen- 
sive, the modern strategic operation also incorporated defensive 
concepts because of changes in NATO strategy. 

American military expert Phillip Petersen believed that a con- 
ventional air operation against NATO's airfields and nuclear 
weapons sites would substitute aviation and the fire of conventional 



679 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

missiles for nuclear strikes. The air operation could neutralize 
NATO's air defense assets, destroy nuclear weapons, and disrupt 
command and control capabilities. Highly mobile first- and second- 
echelon ground forces, known as operational maneuver groups, 
could break through the forward defenses and penetrate deep into 
the enemy's rear. If NATO's nuclear weapons could be success- 
fully destroyed, Warsaw Pact tanks and armored personnel car- 
riers could advance rapidly across Western Europe to the North 
Sea coast and to the Danish Straits before NATO could mobilize 
fully and bring reinforcements from North America. Similar oper- 
ations would take place in the Northwestern and Southwestern 
TVDs and would continue until Soviet troops achieved the stra- 
tegic objective of victory in Europe. 

Although Soviet military theorists traditionally have deempha- 
sized defensive operations, in the 1980s they paid more attention 
to defensive concepts on the strategic, operational, and tactical levels 
and called defense "an essential form of combat action." In 
the 1980s, Soviet military writers also emphasized the increased 
depth of operational defenses in connection with the deep-strike 
concepts incorporated in the United States Army's AirLand 
Battle doctrine (see Glossary) and in NATO's Follow-on-Forces- 
Attack (FOFA — see Glossary) concept. The Soviet concept of 
defense has been distinguished by extreme "combat activeness," 
i.e., using massive firepower to destroy the enemy's aircraft and 
attacking ground forces while Soviet forces prepare a counter- 
attack. 

Strategic Defense 

The Air Defense Forces, known until their 1980 reorganization 
as the National Air Defense Forces, was the one service whose mis- 
sion was almost entirely defensive (see Air Defense Forces, ch. 18). 
These forces were to protect the country from nuclear attack. 
Formed in 1948 to counter the threat of strategic bombers, the Na- 
tional Air Defense Forces had no capability against ballistic mis- 
siles, which became the main threat in the 1960s. The preemptive 
mission of the Strategic Rocket Forces filled this gap and lightened 
the burden of the National Air Defense Forces. 

The principal mission of the Air Defense Forces has remained 
practically unchanged since the 1950s. However, according to 
Sokolovskii's Military Strategy, air defense included both defense 
against ballistic missiles and space defense. In 1989 one antiballis- 
tic missile site around Moscow protected both the capital and the 
National Command Authority housed there. Extensive Soviet 



680 



Military Doctrine and Strategic Concerns 

research on defense against ballistic missiles, however, pointed to 
a possible change in Soviet reliance on strategic offense. 

In addition to the active defense that the mission of the Air 
Defense Forces has called for, the Soviet Union has invested heavily 
in civil defense. The declared mission of civil defense has been to 
provide "reliable protection for the population against weapons 
of mass destruction in wartime" through construction of shelters 
for the leadership, hardening and dispersal of industry, and evacu- 
ation of leadership and civilians from cities. Such efforts continued 
in the 1980s, despite civilian leaders' statements denying the via- 
bility of defense against nuclear weapons and acknowledging that 
nuclear war would be suicidal. 

Global Strategic Concerns 

Since the late 1960s, when the Soviet Union was about to achieve 
nuclear parity with the United States, Soviet military support for 
the global task of promoting Marxism-Leninism intensified. Hoping 
that the attainment of strategic parity with the United States would 
deter the latter from interfering with Soviet international activism, 
the Soviet Union set out to aid and abet the forces of socialism and 
"national liberation" worldwide. 

Soviet doctrine called not only for nuclear and nonnuclear capa- 
bilities to fight a world war but also for adequate conventional forces 
to support the "external function" of the Soviet armed forces in 
defense of "socialist gains" and of the fighters for world revolu- 
tion. Two components of the "internationalist duty" of the Soviet 
armed forces emerged: "socialist internationalism," the defense 
of socialist countries allied to the Soviet Union; and "proletarian 
internationalism," the assistance given to "wars of national liber- 
ation" in the Third World. 

Soviet spokesmen have emphasized repeatedly that the Soviet 
Union does not believe in the "export of revolution" but opposes 
the export of "counterrevolution, " i.e. , actions by Western powers 
that would hinder the historic progress of socialism. In the 1970s, 
combating "counterrevolution" became part of the "internation- 
alist duty" of the Soviet armed forces. 

The Soviet Union has attempted, not always successfully, to 
reconcile Marxist- Leninist doctrine with state interests. Soviet lead- 
ers have tried to satisfy doctrinal requirements while pursuing the 
military and foreign policies of the Soviet state. Projected world- 
wide, Marxism-Leninism evolved from a purely revolutionary ideol- 
ogy into an ideology rationalizing the actions of a superpower. Often 
state interests were a more reliable guide than ideology to under- 
standing Soviet actions. 



681 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Force Projection on the Periphery 

The Soviet armed forces have exercised their "external func- 
tion" mainly on the periphery of the Soviet Union. They occupied 
eastern Poland in 1939 and annexed Estonia, Latvia, and Lithua- 
nia in 1940 (see Prelude to War, ch. 2). Subsequentiy, during World 
War II they "liberated" Eastern Europe from German rule and 
then incorporated it into a bloc of socialist states (see Appendix C). 

The Soviet Union managed to turn these territories into an out- 
post of socialism, as well as into a defensive buffer against an in- 
vasion from the West. This buffer became increasingly valuable 
to the Soviet Union both as an extension of Soviet air defenses to 
the end of the Soviet defense perimeter and as a potential spring- 
board for an offensive against NATO. 

In 1956 the Soviet Union set a precedent for military interven- 
tion "in defense of socialism" when it suppressed the uprising that 
threatened communist rule in Hungary. In August 1968, the Soviet 
Union again intervened militarily in Eastern Europe when it in- 
vaded Czechoslovakia in response to the Czechoslovak reform 
movement begun in the spring. The invasion later was justified 
on the basis of the doctrine of "limited sovereignty" of socialist 
states. Also known as the Brezhnev Doctrine, the doctrine was first 
enunciated on September 21 , 1968, in a Pravda editorial, to justify 
the invasion. Because Czechoslovakia and Hungary lie on the Soviet 
defense perimeter, national security considerations, in addition to 
ideological and political concerns, undoubtedly played a part in 
the Soviet decision to intervene. 

The December 1979 invasion of Afghanistan was another case 
in which doctrinal concerns and interests of state security coalesced 
(see Asia, ch. 10). Although nominally nonaligned, Afghanistan 
was, according to Soviet arguments, well on its way to socialism 
in 1979, and a reversal was unacceptable to the Soviet Union. In 
addition, because Afghanistan borders the Soviet Union, Soviet 
leaders sought to prevent it from aligning itself with the West or 
from becoming an Islamic republic allied to Ayatollah Sayyid 
Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini's Iran. The invasion, although "cor- 
rect" according to Soviet ideological criteria, plunged the Soviet 
Union into one of the longest local wars (see Glossary) it had ever 
fought, second only to the 1939-40 Soviet-Finnish War, in which 
over 100,000 Soviet troops died. In 1988 the Soviet leadership 
declared that it would negotiate a troop withdrawal from Af- 
ghanistan and seek a political setdement. On April 14, 1988, Soviet 
foreign minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze signed an agreement in 
Geneva providing for the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Af- 
ghanistan by February 15, 1989. 



682 



Missile cruiser Slava 
Courtesy United States Navy 



The invasion of Afghanistan tarnished the Soviet image abroad, 
where the invasion was perceived and condemned as an act of ag- 
gression. Some Western analysts regarded it as an unprecedented 
extension of the Brezhnev Doctrine of " socialist internationalism" 
to a country that was nonaligned and thus not part of the world 
socialist system (see Glossary). A majority vote in the United Na- 
tions (UN) censured the invasion as a flagrant intervention in the 
internal affairs of a sovereign state. Soviet leaders hoped that the 
1988 Geneva agreement, which stipulated a unilateral withdrawal 
of Soviet forces, would placate world opinion and repair the politi- 
cal damage done by the war. 

The only benefit that the Soviet Union appeared to have derived 
from the war in Afghanistan was the use of Afghan territory to 
train Soviet troops to fight in mountainous terrain and to test Soviet 
weapons. However, Soviet concepts of offense and combined arms, 
and Soviet troops and weapons, fared poorly in the difficult moun- 
tain terrain. Tanks were of little use in ground combat in narrow 
mountain passes. The Soviet military learned that helicopters were 
of greater importance in the mountains because helicopters could 
carry out air attacks and could land troops on enemy territory. The 
Soviet military also found that the enemy's surface-to-air missiles 
posed a grave threat to attacking Soviet aircraft. Thus, the Soviet 



683 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Union probably decided to withdraw from Afghanistan not only 
for political but also for military reasons. 

Military Presence in the Third World 

The Soviet Union has sought to restructure international rela- 
tions and to achieve a world socialist system largely through polit- 
ical influence; however, it has not reneged on the promise of military 
aid for revolutionary movements in the Third World under the 
principle of ''proletarian internationalism" (see Glossary). Soviet 
leaders reaffirmed this principle in the 1986 party program (see 
Glossary) of the CPSU. Yet the Soviet Union has also sought to 
advance Soviet state interests by gaining a military foothold in stra- 
tegically important areas of the Third World. 

Because of the dual and often contradictory nature of Soviet ob- 
jectives in the Third World, the Soviet military has had successes 
and failures in its dealings with it. Two large-scale, successful Soviet- 
supported interventions took place, in Angola in 1975 and in Ethio- 
pia in 1977. In both places the Soviet Union provided arms and 
military advisers and used Cuban troops to help pro-Soviet ele- 
ments consolidate power. By contrast, in 1976 the Soviet Union 
suffered a reversal in Egypt where, after years of massive military 
assistance, the Egyptian government asked Soviet advisers to leave, 
canceled access for the Soviet Naval Forces, and abrogated the 
Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation with the Soviet Union. Simi- 
larly, Somalia, once the most important Soviet client in sub-Saharan 
Africa, abrogated its friendship treaty in 1977 because of the Soviet 
tilt toward Ethiopia and denied use of naval facilities at Berbera 
to the Soviet Naval Forces. In the 1980s, combating "counterrevo- 
lution" in the Third World was not an unqualified success for the 
Soviet military, which, for political reasons, had shunned direct 
intervention in countries far from Soviet borders. In the 1980s, 
Soviet military aid to allied regimes in Nicaragua, Angola, Mozam- 
bique, and Cambodia was unable to rid these beleaguered Marxist 
regimes of "counterrevolutionary" resistance forces. 

The Soviet Union has long been the world's major supplier of 
military advisory assistance. According to the United States govern- 
ment, in 1986 about 21 ,000 Soviet and East European military ad- 
visers (most of whom were Soviet advisers) were stationed in Third 
World countries, including about 8,000 in Africa, almost 6,000 
in the Middle East, and about 3,000 in Afghanistan. The Soviet 
Union has also used military "proxies," or allied forces, to sub- 
stitute for or buttress Soviet military advisers serving in Third World 
countries. Advisers and combatants from Cuba, Vietnam, the 
Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea), the People's 



684 



Military Doctrine and Strategic Concerns 

Democratic Republic of Yemen (South Yemen), and Eastern 
Europe — particularly the German Democratic Republic (East Ger- 
many) and Bulgaria — have been used in various Third World coun- 
tries, such as Ethiopia, Angola, and Mozambique. 

Despite ideological setbacks, the Soviet Union has derived con- 
siderable military-strategic advantage by establishing bases and 
naval access in the Third World. In the 1980s, facilities were avail- 
able to the Soviet Union at Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam, Aden and 
the island of Socotra in South Yemen, Massawa and the island of 
Dahlak in Ethiopia, Luanda in Angola, and Maputo in Mozam- 
bique. Part of a worldwide Soviet military support structure, such 
installations increased Soviet influence in the Third World. Ameri- 
can analyst Alex Alexiev has argued that Soviet arms deliveries 
to certain countries have actually been attempts to pre-position war 
materiel in case of global war. Alexiev believed such pre-positioning 
to have taken place in Libya, where Soviet deliveries increased the 
number of tanks and armored personnel carriers from 175 in 1971 
to 4,400 in 1983. Similarly, South Yemen had 50 tanks and no 
armored personnel carriers in 1975, while in 1982, after Soviet ship- 
ments, it had 450 modern tanks and 300 armored personnel carriers. 

In 1989 Soviet global military initiative appeared to be on hold. 
On the one hand, Gorbachev declared his "solidarity with the forces 
of national liberation and social emancipation" throughout the 
globe. On the other hand, his "new thinking" in foreign and mili- 
tary policy deemphasized "military- technical solutions" to the 
world's problems and seemed to promise fewer Soviet military fo- 
rays into the Third World and less interference in the internal af- 
fairs of socialist allies. Many Western observers believed that 
Gorbachev wanted to replace emphasis on Soviet military power 
with an approach that combined economic, political, and military 
instruments of power. 

Arms Control and Military Objectives 

Since the late 1960s, the Soviet Union has made arms control 
an important component of its foreign and military policy. Soviet 
public diplomacy liberally used arms control and disarmament slo- 
gans. Arms control proposals and signed agreements, however, have 
been carefully coordinated with doctrinal requirements and weapons 
programs. 

Soviet objectives in all areas of arms control — strategic, space, 
intermediate-range nuclear, and conventional weapons — have been, 
first, to help avert a world war, and, second, to prevent the ero- 
sion of Soviet capability for fighting such a war. If efforts to avert 
war were to fail, Soviet leaders required that their armed forces 



685 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

be able to fulfill military missions and win all military conflicts. 
War was to be avoided by entering into agreements that would 
limit an adversary's weapons and forestall the adversary's develop- 
ment of a war- winning military posture. Capability for fighting 
and winning a war was to be continued by acquiring the neces- 
sary arsenal within the constraints of an agreement and by main- 
taining it against all odds. 

Strategic Arms Control 

Strategic arms control imposes limitations or stipulates reduc- 
tions in the numbers of Soviet and United States intercontinental 
nuclear weapons that are capable of reaching each other's home- 
lands. Weapons limited have included ICBMs, SLBMs, bombers 
armed with nuclear bombs and cruise missiles, and antiballistic 
missile systems. Motivated by its desire to avert a nuclear war and 
to be prepared to fight one, the Soviet Union has sought strategic 
arms control agreements that would limit United States nuclear 
capabilities for intercontinental attack but would permit the Soviet 
Union to amass a strategic arsenal for fighting and winning a 
nuclear war. 

Averting a World War 

According to the worst-case scenario, still accepted by Soviet plan- 
ners in 1989, a world nuclear war could start with a disarming first 
strike on the Soviet Union's strategic nuclear weapons and on its 
strategic command and control centers (see Military Art, this ch.). 
An arms control agreement that is advantageous to the Soviet Union 
would help deter such a calamity by constraining the strategic forces 
of the United States and denying it the weapons needed to execute 
a strategic attack with impunity. 

Before agreeing to limit its strategic forces, the Soviet Union 
wanted at least numerical equality with the United States. When 
arms control was first discussed in the early 1960s, under no cir- 
cumstances were Soviet leaders willing to settle for a "minimum 
deterrent." For example, when President Lyndon B. Johnson pro- 
posed in January 1964 to freeze both Soviet and United States stra- 
tegic missiles at existing levels, the Soviet Union refused because 
the "freeze" would have codified their strategic inferiority. Yet 
in 1969, after the Soviet Union began to deploy the third genera- 
tion of ICBMs (the SS-9, SS-11, and SS-13) and was developing 
the fourth generation (the SS-17, SS-18, and SS-19), it agreed 
to hold the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT — see Glossary) 
with the United States. In 1972 the negotiations resulted in the 
signing of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty) and of 



686 



Military Doctrine and Strategic Concerns 

the Interim Agreement on the Limitation of Strategic Offensive 
Arms. Essentially, both agreements froze the deployment of stra- 
tegic defensive and offensive armaments. 

Because the Soviet Union wanted to continue the buildup of its 
strategic offensive forces, it accepted the offensive arms limitation 
grudgingly. Its main motive in signing the agreements resulting 
from the first series of SALT negotiations, known as SALT I, was 
to prevent the United States from deploying an effective defense 
against ballistic missiles. The Soviet Union clearly preferred a vul- 
nerable adversary that would be deterred from striking by the 
prospect of massive Soviet retaliation on the adversary's unprotected 
weapons, economy, and population. 

Retaining a Capability to Fight and to Win 

In addition to deterring a nuclear world war, Soviet strategic 
forces were expected to fight it and to win it. SALT I was accepta- 
ble to the Soviet military not only because it made war less likely 
but also because the Soviet military would have the capability to 
carry out its intercontinental strike mission even in a worst-case 
scenario. By limiting defensive systems to one installation in each 
country, the ABM Treaty guaranteed that Soviet missiles could 
successfully penetrate United States airspace. 

Because SALT I limited the number of ballistic missile launch- 
ers but not the number of warheads, the Soviet Union was able 
to increase its intercontinental missile arsenal. It used new tech- 
nologies to equip its land- and sea-based strategic missiles with sev- 
eral warheads, known as multiple independently targetable reentry 
vehicles (MIRVs). The Soviet military also greatly improved the 
accuracies of its missiles, especially the SS-18 and SS-19 ICBMs. 

In 1979, when President Jimmy Carter and General Secretary 
Leonid Brezhnev signed the second SALT agreement in Vienna, 
the Soviet Union had 5,000 warheads on its strategic missiles, an 
increase of 2,500 since 1972. By 1986 the number of Soviet stra- 
tegic warheads exceeded 10,000. Thus neither of the SALT agree- 
ments significantly constrained Soviet nuclear modernization and 
the growth of the Soviet arsenal, whose ultimate aim was to hold 
at risk the vulnerable United States force of land-based Minute- 
man III missiles. 

Soviet leaders objected to United States proposals in the Stra- 
tegic Arms Reduction Talks (START), a new round of talks to 
reduce nuclear arsenals, that began in June 1982, because, if ac- 
cepted, such proposals would have cut in half the number of Soviet 
ICBMs, their principal war-fighting component. In the mid-1980s, 
when it began deploying the fifth generation of ICBMs (the mobile 



687 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

SS-24 and SS-25 missiles, to assume part of the SS-18 mission), 
the Soviet Union began to show interest in reducing the number 
of its heavy SS-18 missiles. Since their deployment in 1974, the 
United States had viewed the SS-18s as the most threatening and 
destabilizing component of the Soviet arsenal. In 1989 the Soviet 
leaders continued to link reduction of the SS-18s to severe restric- 
tions on the testing of SDL First unveiled by President Ronald W. 
Reagan in March 1983, SDI promised to yield advanced tech- 
nologies for a North American antimissile shield. Should SDI prove 
feasible, it could render Soviet nuclear weapons impotent and ob- 
solete, according to some Western specialists. 

This prospect alarmed the Soviet military because such a shield 
could prevent it from attaining its two most important military ob- 
jectives: avoiding wars and being prepared to fight them. In 1989 
the Soviet Union appeared willing to agree to deep cuts in its offen- 
sive weapons in order to derail SDI or at least to force the United 
States to ban SDI-related tests in space for a minimum of ten years. 

Objectives in Space 

Soviet interest in space, both for peaceful and for military use, 
has been intense since the 1950s. During talks on limiting the mili- 
tary use of space, Soviet negotiators have tried to block develop- 
ment of defensive and offensive United States space systems. At 
the same time, the Soviet Union has conducted extensive research 
in military space-based technologies. 

Negotiations 

Attempts to limit the military use of space began soon after the 
Soviet Union rejected President Dwight D. Eisenhower's 1958 
proposal to prohibit all military activity in space. The rejection was 
understandable because the Soviet Union had just launched the 
first artificial earth satellite, Sputnik, and was interested in deploying 
military reconnaissance satellites. In 1963, however, the Soviet 
Union signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty with the United States 
and Britain, prohibiting the explosion of nuclear weapons in the 
atmosphere, and in 1967 it became party to the Outer Space Treaty, 
which banned the deployment of nuclear weapons in earth orbit 
and on celestial bodies. 

In March 1977, President Carter, concerned about Soviet 
resumption of antisatellite tests, called for talks about banning anti- 
satellite (AS AT) weapons. Although the United States pressed for 
a comprehensive ban on such systems, the Soviet Union was un- 
willing to dismantle its operational ASAT in view of the heavy and 
still growing United States dependence on reconnaissance satellites. 



688 



Military Doctrine and Strategic Concerns 

After three rounds of negotiations, the talks were suspended in 
December 1979 after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. 

In international and bilateral forums, the Soviet Union tried to 
derail advanced space defense plans. In 1981, 1983, and 1984, the 
Soviet Union, anxious to prevent deployment of a United States 
ballistic missile defense system in space, submitted three separate 
draft treaties to the United Nations. Each treaty proposed to ban 
weapons stationed in orbit and intended to strike targets on earth, 
in the air, and in space. The treaties would have blocked the de- 
velopment of a space-based ABM system and precluded military 
use of vehicles like the space shuttle. In March 1985, bilateral talks 
on space and space weapons limitations between the United States 
and the Soviet Union opened in Geneva. In early 1989, the Soviet 
Union had not achieved its principal objective in the talks — to de- 
rail SDL 

Soviet Space Weapons Development 

Since the Sputnik launch in 1957, the military potential of space 
has fascinated Soviet leaders. The 1962 and 1963 editions of 
Sokolovskii's Military Strategy advocated development of a military 
capability in space. In the late 1960s, the Soviet Union developed 
the fractional orbital bombardment system (FOBS) — a nuclear- 
armed space weapon with a depressed trajectory. The 1967 Outer 
Space Treaty neutralized the FOBS threat, but the Soviet Union 
retained an interest in undertaking offensive missions in space as 
part of its combined arms concept. In 1971 it acquired a ground- 
based orbital ASAT interceptor, the stated purpose of which was 
defensive but which could also attack satellites in near-earth orbit. 
The Soviet Union developed a variety of satellites that in 1989 were 
capable of reconnaissance, missile-launch detection, attack warn- 
ing, command and control, and antisatellite functions. The Soviet 
Union also had impressive manned space programs with military 
implications, mostly aboard the Saliut and Mir space stations. In 
addition, by 1989 the Soviet Union had explored advanced space 
weapons, both defensive and offensive, using lasers, particle beams, 
radio frequencies, and kinetic energy. Although Soviet negotia- 
tors at the Geneva space talks portrayed Soviet space efforts as 
peaceful, in the late 1980s Soviet scientists and military strategists 
continued to study space in their search for new weapons and mili- 
tary options. 

Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Arms Control 

Intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) are nuclear weapons 
systems with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. They could 



689 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

be used in a theater operation either at the outset of hostilities or 
after nuclear escalation on the battlefield. INF arms control be- 
came a Soviet concern in the 1980s, when United States nuclear 
missiles were deployed in Western Europe to offset new Soviet INF 
deployments on Soviet territory. Although the 1987 Intermediate- 
Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty) led to the dismantling 
of the most threatening, longer-range INF missiles, capable of hit- 
ting Soviet territory, Soviet strategists viewed complete denuclear- 
ization of Europe as the most desirable end of INF arms control. 

Threat Reduction 

Since the 1950s, the Soviet Union has viewed United States 
nuclear weapons deployed in Europe and capable of striking the 
Soviet Union as being particularly threatening. The Soviet mili- 
tary first formulated its preemptive nuclear strategy in the 1950s 
to neutralize the threat of United States strategic bombers armed 
with nuclear weapons and stationed in Europe. In 1979 NATO 
decided to offset Soviet deployments of the new intermediate-range 
SS-20 missiles by deploying new United States nuclear systems 
in Western Europe. These systems — 108 Pershing II missiles and 
464 ground-launched cruise missiles (GLCMs) — could reach Soviet 
territory. The Soviet military regarded both systems as a grave 
threat because of their high accuracy and because of the Pershing 
IPs short flying time (under ten minutes). The Soviet Union as- 
serted that both the Pershing lis and the hard-to-detect GLCMs 
could make a surprise strike against the Soviet Union. 

The Soviet Union tried both antinuclear propaganda and negoti- 
ations to forestall the NATO deployments. Formal negotiations 
began in November 1981, at which time the United States proposed 
the " global zero option," banning or eliminating all United States 
and Soviet longer-range intermediate nuclear forces (LRINF), in- 
cluding Soviet SS-4s, SS-5s, and SS-20s, and the United States 
Pershing lis and GLCMs. The Soviet Union rejected the "global 
zero option" and insisted on including the British and French 
nuclear components in INF reductions. 

In October 1986, at the Reykjavik Summit, the Soviet Union 
ceased insisting on including British and French weapons in an 
INF agreement. Nevertheless, it attempted to link an INF agree- 
ment to strategic arms reductions and to the renunciation of SDI. 
Only after Soviet negotiators abandoned all linkages and agreed 
to destroy all Soviet longer-range and shorter-range INF in Eu- 
rope and Asia and to permit on-site inspection were they able to 
achieve their goal: the eventual removal of the Pershing lis and 
GLCMs that are capable of reaching Soviet territory. 



690 



Military Doctrine and Strategic Concerns 

The INF Treaty, signed on December 8, 1987, in Washington 
by President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev, stipulat- 
ed that each party would eliminate all of its intermediate-range mis- 
siles and their launchers. These missiles included Soviet SS-4, SS-5, 
SS-20 longer-range INF (with ranges between 1,000 and 5,500 
kilometers), and SS-12 and SS-23 shorter-range missiles (with 
ranges between 500 and 1,000 kilometers). The treaty called for 
the destruction of about 2,700 United States and Soviet missiles. 

Denuclearization of Europe 

Since the 1950s, Soviet leaders have sought complete removal 
of nuclear weapons from Western Europe. Stripping Europe of 
nuclear weapons not only would reduce the nuclear threat on the 
Soviet periphery but also would make easier a Soviet convention- 
al offensive in Europe. In 1988, even before the INF agreement 
had been ratified by the United States Senate, Soviet spokesmen 
were advocating removal of all nuclear weapons from Europe. They 
especially focused on NATO's tactical nuclear weapons arsenal, 
deployed mainly in the Federal Republic of Germany (West 
Germany) . 

In late 1987, Foreign Minister Shevardnadze asserted that on 
INF agreement was a step toward denuclearization and that its sign- 
ing proved that "the Soviet Union and the United States have fi- 
nally spoken together the first word in a nuclear-free vocabulary. ' ' 
Soviet and Soviet-sponsored denuclearization initiatives in Europe 
have included several proposals for a nuclear-weapon-free corridor 
in Central Europe (submitted between 1956 and 1987 by the Soviet 
Union, Poland, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia), as well as 
for nuclear- weapon-free zones in Northern Europe, the Balkans, 
and the Mediterranean. If such zones were established, the United 
States and NATO would have to withdraw nuclear weapons not 
only from Europe but also from the surrounding seas. 

Conventional Arms Control 

For many years, the Soviet Union could not reconcile conven- 
tional arms control with its military objectives of avoiding wars 
and being prepared to fight them. Soviet operational concepts have 
called for numerical superiority in conventional forces both to deter 
the adversary from starting a war and to destroy the adversary's 
forces and armaments and occupy its territory should a war break 
out. Yet deep reductions in Soviet armed forces have a precedent: 
Khrushchev reduced conventional forces by more than 2.1 mil- 
lion personnel between 1955 and 1958, and he announced further 
reductions of 1.2 million troops in 1960. 



691 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Since Khrushchev's ouster in 1964, the Soviet military has 
frowned on personnel reductions. In the 1960s, when United States 
secretary of state William Rogers suggested negotiations to reduce 
armed forces in Europe, the Soviet leaders resisted bitterly. They 
finally agreed to negotiate in exchange for United States partici- 
pation in a European security conference. The Mutual Balanced 
Forces Reduction (MBFR) talks began in 1973 but remained 
stalemated for years. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Soviet 
conventional buildup in Europe progressed. Soviet leaders showed 
interest in the talks only in December 1975, when the Western 
proposal included a reduction in United States tactical nuclear 
weapons in Europe. 

In 1987 the Soviet Union called for a new forum to discuss the 
balance of conventional forces in Europe "from the Atlantic to the 
Urals." Soviet leaders appeared to espouse the new Soviet stra- 
tegic concepts of "reasonable sufficiency" and nonprovocative 
defense, and they maintained that reductions in conventional forces 
should make it impossible for either side to undertake offensive ac- 
tions and launch surprise strikes. However, the Soviet military 
resisted a defensive concept because deep cuts in personnel and 
armaments such as tanks could prevent Soviet forces from pursu- 
ing their military objectives under the doctrine calling for victory. 

In December 1988, Gorbachev announced unilateral reductions 
in Soviet armed forces. Soviet forces were to be reduced by 500,000 
men by 1991. Soviet forces in the Atlantic-to-the-Urals area were 
to be reduced by 10,000 tanks, 8,500 artillery pieces, and 800 com- 
bat aircraft. Several Soviet tank divisions were to be withdrawn 
from Eastern Europe, together with assault-landing and assault- 
river-crossing units. Soviet and East European divisions were to 
be reorganized, with a major cutback in the number of tanks. 
During 1988 and 1989, the Non-Soviet Warsaw Pact (NSWP) coun- 
tries also announced unilateral reductions in manpower and con- 
ventional armaments. 

In 1989 the Soviet leadership appeared to be interested in 
negotiating seriously on conventional arms control in order to 
reduce the threat of new Western weapons and operational con- 
cepts, to create a "breathing space" for internal economic and so- 
cial restructuring, and to divert manpower and resources to the 
country's economy. New negotiations on Conventional Forces in 
Europe (CFE) opened in March 1989. Both Warsaw Pact and 
NATO negotiators expressed interest in stabilizing the strategic 
situation in Europe by eliminating capabilities for initiating sur- 
prise attacks and large-scale offensive actions. 



692 



Military Doctrine and Strategic Concerns 

Although Gorbachev proclaimed his commitment to a doctrine 
that emphasized war avoidance, diplomacy, and the achievement 
of political goals with political means, the Soviet military continued 
to press for high-quality military capabilities, commensurate with 
perceived present and future threats to Soviet national secu- 
rity. Soviet military authorities endorsed Gorbachev's arms con- 
trol efforts as well as the concepts of parity and "reasonable 
sufficiency." Nevertheless, they supported Gorbachev's pragmatic 
policies largely in the hope that a renewed economy would help 
create a modern industrial base. Such a base, they believed, would 
make it possible not merely to counter Western emerging technol- 
ogies but also to produce fundamentally new weapons for the 
twenty-first century. 

A transformation of NATO and of the Warsaw Pact, as pro- 
posed by Soviet leaders in 1989, would necessitate that both sides 
adopt a defensive, no- victory doctrine, stressing negotiations and 
restoration of the status quo. On the Soviet side, this would call 
for rejecting or circumventing Marxist-Leninist dogma and for 
revising political goals. Only then could the rewriting of Soviet mili- 
tary art yield a strategy, operational art, and tactics based on 
genuinely defensive principles, excluding deep offensive operations, 
massive counteroffensives, and the requisite capabilities. In 1989, 
however, Soviet military doctrine still bore the burden of Marxist- 
Leninist revolutionary ideology predicting the eventual worldwide 
ascendancy of socialism. 

* * * 

Most original sources on Soviet military doctrine, policy, and 
strategy are available only in Russian. However, a good introduc- 
tion to Soviet military thought, The Soviet Art of War, edited by 
Harriet F. Scott and William F. Scott, is a judicious combination 
of the editors' commentaries and of excerpts from translated writ- 
ings of Soviet military authorities. Paul D. Kelley's Soviet General 
Doctrine for War, a 1987 publication of the United States Army In- 
telligence and Threat Analysis Center (USAITAC), contains a 
detailed treatment of Soviet military doctrine and military science. 
Students of Soviet tactics should also consider William P. Baxter's 
The Soviet Way of Warfare, in which the author discusses the offen- 
sive and defensive options of Soviet tactical combat. Michael 
MccGwire's Military Objectives in Soviet Foreign Policy offers a com- 
prehensive overview of Soviet strategic and military objectives and 
of Soviet operational planning. Finally, the annual Department of 



693 



Military Doctrine and Strategic Concerns 

Defense publication Soviet Military Power presents the official United 
States Department of Defense view of Soviet military developments. 

For the reader who would like to study Soviet military thought, 
the United States Air Force series of translations of Soviet mili- 
tary monographs is invaluable. Among the most illuminating and 
thought-provoking in the series are the 1972 translation of the 1968 
classic, Marxism-Leninism on War and the Army, and the controver- 
sial Basic Principles of Operational Art and Tactics by V.E. Savkin. 
Although the heavy emphasis on nuclear weapons in both works 
appeared outdated in the 1980s, the doctrinal tenets and many of 
the strategic and operational concepts remained valid. Scientific- 
Technical Progress and the Revolution in Military Affairs, edited by N. A. 
Lomov and published in 1973, is an important reminder that 
nuclear weapons were only a stage in the technological revolution 
and that other revolutionary developments may follow. (For fur- 
ther information and complete citations, see Bibliography.) 



694 



Chapter 18. Armed Forces and 
Defense Organization 




Facets of the armed forces 



IN 1988 THE ARMED FORCES of the Soviet Union celebrated 
their seventieth anniversary. As old as the Soviet state, they have 
been highly integrated into its political, economic, and social sys- 
tems. The missions of the Soviet armed forces were to defend the 
Soviet Union and its socialist (see Glossary) allies, to ensure favor- 
able conditions for the development of the world socialist system 
(see Glossary), and to assist the national liberation movements 
around the world. The armed forces have defended communist par- 
ties that dominated Soviet-allied socialist countries as well as the 
Soviet Union. They also have projected military power abroad to 
help pro-Soviet forces gain or maintain political power. Thus, the 
armed forces have provided the military might that is the basis of 
the Soviet Union's claim to be a superpower with global interests. 
To ensure that the military pursues these largely political objec- 
tives, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) controlled 
the armed forces through a combination of political indoctrination, 
co-optation, and party supervision at every level. 

The Soviet armed forces, the world's largest military establish- 
ment, in 1989 had nearly 6 million troops in uniform. The armed 
forces had five armed services rather than the standard army, navy, 
and air force organizations found in most of the world's armed 
forces. In their official order of importance, the Soviet armed ser- 
vices were the Strategic Rocket Forces, Ground Forces, Air Forces, 
Air Defense Forces, and Naval Forces. The Soviet armed forces 
also included two paramilitary forces, the Internal Troops and the 
Border Troops. 

The Soviet Union has always been a militarized state. One-fourth 
of the entire Soviet population in 1989 was engaged in military 
activities, whether active duty, military production, or civilian mili- 
tary training. Yet the sheer size of the armed forces has not trans- 
lated directly into combat power. Manpower, training, logistics, 
equipment, and economic problems combined to limit the opera- 
tional effectiveness of Soviet forces. Many servicemen were assigned 
nonmilitary duties that in many other countries were performed 
by civilians. 

Organizational Development and Combat Experience 

Immediately after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the Bolshe- 
viks (see Glossary) merged their 20,000-man army, the Red Guards, 
with 200,000 Baltic Fleet sailors and Petrograd garrison soldiers 



697 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

who supported the Bolsheviks. Bolshevik leader Vladimir I. Lenin 
decreed the establishment of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army 
on January 28, 1918, and Leon Trotsky was the first commissar 
of war. The Bolsheviks recognized the importance of building an 
army under their control; without a loyal army, the Bolshevik or- 
ganization itself would have been unable to hold the power it had 
seized. 

The early Red Army was egalitarian but poorly disciplined. The 
Bolsheviks considered military ranks and saluting to be bourgeois 
customs and abolished them. Soldiers elected their own leaders and 
voted on which orders to follow. This arrangement was abolished, 
however, under pressure of the Civil War (1918-21), and ranks 
were reinstated (see Civil War and War Communism, ch. 2). 

Because most professional officers had joined the anti-Bolshevik, 
or White, forces, the Red Army initially faced a shortage of ex- 
perienced military leaders. To remedy this situation, the Bolshe- 
viks recruited 50,000 former Imperial Army officers to command 
the Red Army. At the same time, they attached political commis- 
sars to Red Army units to monitor the actions of professional com- 
manders and their allegiance to the Russian Communist Party 
(Bolshevik), the name of the Bolshevik organization as of March 
1918. By 1921 the Red Army had defeated four White armies and 
held off five armed, foreign contingents that had intervened in the 
Civil War. 

After the Civil War, the Red Army became an increasingly 
professional military organization. With most of its 5 million soldiers 
demobilized, the Red Army was transformed into a small regular 
force, and territorial militias were created for wartime mobiliza- 
tion. Soviet military schools, established during the Civil War, 
began to graduate large numbers of trained officers loyal to the 
party. In an effort to increase the prestige of the military profes- 
sion, the party downgraded political commissars, established the 
principle of one-man command, and reestablished formal military 
ranks. 

During the 1930s, Soviet leader Joseph V. Stalin's five-year plans 
and industrialization drive built the productive base necessary to 
modernize the Red Army. As the likelihood of war in Europe in- 
creased later in the decade, the Soviet Union tripled its military 
expenditures and doubled the size of its regular forces to match 
the power of its potential enemies. In 1937, however, Stalin purged 
the Red Army and deprived it of its best military leaders (see The 
Period of the Purges, ch. 2). Fearing or imagining that the mili- 
tary posed a challenge to his rule, Stalin jailed or executed an esti- 
mated 30,000 Red Army officers, including three of five marshals 



698 



Armed Forces and Defense Organization 

and 90 percent of all field grade officers. Stalin also restored the 
former dual command authority of political commissars in Red 
Army units. These actions were to severely impair the Red Army's 
capabilities in the Soviet-Finnish War of 1939-40 and in World 
War II. 

After occupying the Baltic states and eastern Poland under the 
terms of the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact of 1939, the Soviet 
Union demanded territorial concessions from Finland in late 1939 
(see Foreign Policy, 1928-39, ch. 2). When the Finnish govern- 
ment refused, the Red Army invaded Finland. The resulting war 
was a disaster for the Soviet Union. Although the Soviet Union 
has not published casualty statistics, about 100,000 Red Army 
troops are believed to have died in the process of overcoming the 
small, poorly equipped Finnish army. 

The Red Army had little time to correct its numerous deficien- 
cies before Adolf Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, which be- 
gan his war against the Soviet Union, on June 22, 1941. At the 
beginning of the Great Patriotic War (see Glossary), the Red Army 
was forced to retreat, trading territory for time. But it managed 
to halt the Wehrmacht's blitzkrieg in December 1941 at the gates 
of Moscow. In 1942 the Wehrmacht launched a new offensive 
through the Volga region aimed at seizing Soviet oil resources in 
the Caucasus. At this critical moment, Stalin reinstituted one-man 
command and gave his field commanders more operational in- 
dependence. The Red Army encircled and destroyed German forces 
in the city of Stalingrad in a battie that ended in February 1943. 
In the summer of 1943, the Red Army seized the strategic initia- 
tive, and it liberated all Soviet territory from German occupation 
during 1944. After having driven the German army out of Eastern 
Europe, in May 1945 the Red Army launched the final assault on 
Berlin that ended the Great Patriotic War. The Red Army emerged 
from the war as the most powerful land army in history. (After 
the war, the army was known as the Soviet army.) The defeat of 
the Wehrmacht had come, however, at the cost of 7 million mili- 
tary and 13 million civilian deaths among the Soviet population. 

From the late 1940s to the late 1960s, the Soviet armed forces 
focused on adapting to the changed nature of warfare in the era 
of nuclear arms and achieving parity with the United States in stra- 
tegic nuclear weapons. Conventional military power showed its con- 
tinued importance, however, when the Soviet Union used its troops 
to invade Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 to keep 
these countries within the Soviet alliance system (see Appendix C). 
In the 1970s, the Soviet Union began to modernize its conventional 
warfare and power projection capabilities. At the same time, it 



699 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

became more involved in regional conflicts or local wars (see Glos- 
sary) than ever before. The Soviet Union supplied arms and sent 
military advisers to a variety of Third World allies in Africa, Asia, 
and the Middle East. Soviet generals planned military operations 
against rebels in Angola and Ethiopia. Soviet troops, however, saw 
little combat action until the invasion of Afghanistan in Decem- 
ber 1979. They fought a counterinsurgency against the Afghan 
rebels, or mujahidin, for nearly eight and one-half years. An esti- 
mated 15,000 Soviet soldiers had been killed and 35,000 wounded 
in the conflict by the time Soviet forces began to withdraw from 
Afghanistan in May 1988. All 110,000 Soviet troops deployed in 
Afghanistan had been withdrawn by February 1989, according to 
Soviet authorities. 

Strategic Leadership of the Armed Forces 

Four main organizations controlled the Soviet armed forces. The 
Defense Council, which included the highest party and military 
officials in the Soviet Union, was the supreme decision-making body 
on national security issues. The Main Military Council, the Minis- 
try of Defense, and the General Staff were strictly military organi- 
zations. 

Defense Council 

The Soviet Constitution states that the Presidium of the Supreme 
Soviet forms the Defense Council. First mentioned by the Soviet 
press in 1976, the Defense Council has been the organ through 
which the CPSU Central Committee, the Supreme Soviet, and the 
Council of Ministers supposedly exercised supreme leadership of 
the armed forces and national defense. In reality, these bodies car- 
ried out the Defense Council's decisions on issues concerning the 
armed forces and national defense. 

The general secretary of the CPSU has normally been the chair- 
man of the Defense Council and the only member of the Defense 
Council identified in the Soviet media. As chairman of the Defense 
Council, the general secretary has also been the supreme com- 
mander in chief of the Soviet armed forces. The chairman of the 
Council of Ministers, the chairman of the Committee for State Secu- 
rity (Komitet gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti — KGB), the minister 
of internal affairs, the minister of foreign affairs, and the minister 
of defense have also probably served as members of the Defense 
Council. Their official duties have enabled them to implement de- 
cisions reached in the Defense Council. The Defense Council has 
been described as a working group of the Politburo, and its decisions 



700 



Armed Forces and Defense Organization 

have probably been subject to ratification by a vote in a full meet- 
ing of the Politburo. 

The Defense Council has made decisions on political-military 
and military-economic issues, using analyses and recommendations 
it received from the Main Military Council, the Ministry of 
Defense, and the General Staff. The Defense Council, according 
to some Western authorities, would approve changes in military 
doctrine and strategy, large operations, the commitment of troops 
abroad, and the use of nuclear weapons. It has decided on major 
changes in the organizational structure of the armed services and 
the appointment or dismissal of high-ranking officers. In addition, 
the Defense Council has been the highest link between the econ- 
omy and the military, which were also intertwined at lower levels. 
The Defense Council has determined the size of the military budget. 
It has approved new weapons systems and coordinated the activi- 
ties of the Ministry of Defense with those of ministries and state 
committees engaged in military research, development, and pro- 
duction. 

Main Military Council 

The Main Military Council was made up of the top leadership 
of the Ministry of Defense. The minister of defense was its chair- 
man. The three first deputy ministers of defense, the eleven deputy 
ministers of defense, and the chief of the Main Political Directorate 
of the Soviet Army and Navy were members of the Main Military 
Council. 

In peacetime the Main Military Council has been responsible 
for the training, readiness status, and mobilization of the armed 
forces. It coordinated the activities of the five armed services and 
resolved interservice disputes over the allocation of roles and mis- 
sions, material resources, and manpower. The Main Military 
Council also presented the Defense Council with the economic and 
budgetary requirements of the armed forces, based on the force 
structure proposed by the General Staff and the armed services. 

In wartime the Main Military Council would become the head- 
quarters (stavka) of the Supreme High Command (Verkhovnoe 
glavnokomandovanie — VGK) of the armed forces. The Main Mili- 
tary Council would then report through the minister of defense to 
the supreme commander in chief and the Defense Council. The 
Supreme High Command would control military operations 
through the General Staff and subordinate commands. 

Ministry of Defense 

The Ministry of Defense, an all-union ministry (see Glossary), 
was technically subordinate to the Council of Ministers, as well 



701 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

as to the Supreme Soviet and the CPSU Central Committee. In 
1989 it was, however, larger than most other ministries and had 
special arrangements for party supervision of, and state participa- 
tion in, its activities. The Ministry of Defense was made up of the 
General Staff, the Main Political Directorate of the Soviet Army 
and Navy, the Warsaw Pact, the five armed services, and the main 
and central directorates (see fig. 28). The minister of defense has 
always been either a leading CPSU civilian official or a Ground 
Forces general; the position has presumably been filled on the 
recommendation of the Defense Council with the approval of the 
Politburo, although the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet has made 
the formal announcement. The three first deputy ministers of 
defense were the chief of the General Staff, the commander in chief 
of the Warsaw Pact, and another senior officer with unspecified 
duties. First deputy ministers of defense have also been selected 
from the Ground Forces. In 1989 the eleven deputy ministers of 
defense included the commanders in chief of the five armed ser- 
vices as well as the chiefs of Civil Defense, Rear Services, Con- 
struction and Troop Billeting, Armaments, the Main Personnel 
Directorate, and the Main Inspectorate. 

The Ministry of Defense directed the five armed services and 
all military activities on a daily basis. It was responsible for field- 
ing, arming, and supplying the armed services, and in peacetime 
all territorial commands of the armed forces reported to it. The 
Ministry of Defense has been staffed almost entirely by professional 
military personnel, and it has had a monopoly on military infor- 
mation because the Soviet Union has lacked independent defense 
research organizations frequentiy found in other countries. This 
monopoly has given high-ranking Soviet officers undisputed in- 
fluence with party and government leaders on issues, ranging from 
arms control to weapons development to arms sales abroad, that 
affect the position and prestige of the armed forces. 

General Staff 

The General Staff has been the center of professional military 
thought in the Soviet Union. Like the Ministry of Defense, the 
General Staff has been dominated by the Ground Forces. In 1989 
the chief, two first deputy chiefs, and three deputy chiefs of the 
General Staff were all Ground Forces officers. The General Staff 
had five main directorates and four directorates. They performed 
strategic and operational research and planning, provided strategic 
military intelligence and analysis to the Defense Council, dealt with 
foreign military attaches, and gave occasional press briefings on 
political-military issues. 



702 



Armed Forces and Defense Organization 

In wartime the General Staff would become the executive agent 
of the Supreme High Command, supervising the execution of mili- 
tary strategy and operations by subordinate commands. The Gen- 
eral Staff would exercise direct control over the three combat arms 
of the armed forces that operate strategic nuclear weapons and 
would coordinate the activities and missions of the five armed 
services. 

The Armed Services 

The general organization of the Strategic Rocket Forces, Ground 
Forces, Air Forces, Air Defense Forces, and Naval Forces at the 
command level paralleled the organization of the Ministry of 
Defense. The commander in chief of an armed service was an ad- 
ministrative rather than an operational commander. He equipped, 
trained, and supplied the forces of the service, but operational 
control rested with the Defense Council and was exercised through 
the General Staff. 

Each armed service had two first deputy commanders in chief, 
one of whom was chief of the main staff for the service (see fig. 29). 
The other had unspecified duties. The deputy commanders in chief 
were numerous. They commanded the combat arms and other 
branches of the service. Some deputy commanders in chief were 
responsible for premilitary and combat training, military educa- 
tion institutions, rear services, or armaments for the service as a 
whole. The armed services also had deputy commanders in chief 
with specialized duties. For example, the Strategic Rocket Forces 
had a deputy commander in chief for rocket engineering. Other 
deputy commanders in chief had responsibilities that were unknown 
to Western observers. The commander in chief, first deputy com- 
manders in chief, and deputy commanders in chief, together with 
the chief of the service's political directorate, represented the mili- 
tary council or top leadership of the service. 

The main staff of each service planned the operational employ- 
ment of its service in coordination with the General Staff in the 
Ministry of Defense. In peacetime the main staff controlled the 
territorial commands or components of a service. 

Strategic Rocket Forces 

The Strategic Rocket Forces, the newest Soviet armed service, 
in 1989 were the preeminent armed service, based on the continued 
importance of their mission. Their prestige had diminished some- 
what, however, because of an increasing emphasis on conventional 
forces. 

The Strategic Rocket Forces were the main Soviet force used 
for attacking an enemy's offensive nuclear weapons, its military 



703 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



MAIN POLITICAL 
DIRECTORATE 

OF THE 
SOVIET ARMY 
AND NAVY 



MINISTRY 
OF DEFENSE 



MINISTRY OF DEFENSE 
MAIN AND 
CENTRAL DIRECTORATES 



MAIN DIRECTORATE 

FOR NAVIGATION 
AND OCEANOGRAPHY 



MAIN DIRECTORATE 
FOR MILITARY 
EDUCATION 
INSTITUTIONS 



MAIN PERSONNEL 
DIRECTORATE 



MAIN 
INSPECTORATE 



CENTRAL ARCHIVES 
DIRECTORATE 



MILITARY BAND 
DIRECTORATE 



MILITARY TRIBUNAL 
DIRECTORATE 



PREMILITARY TRAINING 
DIRECTORATE 



PHYSICAL TRAINING 
AND SPORTS DIRECTORATE 



MAIN MILITARY 
PROCURACY 



WARSAW PACT 



MILITARY 
DISTRICTS (16) 



STRATEGIC 
ROCKET FORCES 



GROUND 
FORCES 



GENERAL STAFF 
OF THE ARMED FORCES 
DIRECTORATES 



MAIN INTELLIGENCE 
DIRECTORATE 




MAIN COMMUNICATIONS 
DIRECTORATE 





MAIN FOREIGN 
MILITARY ASSISTANCE 
DIRECTORATE 



MAIN OPERATIONS 
DIRECTORATE 



MAIN ORGANIZATION 
AND MOBILIZATION 
DIRECTORATE 



MILITARY SCIENCE 
DIRECTORATE 



MILITARY TOPOGRAPHY 
DIRECTORATE 



EXTERNAL RELATIONS 
DIRECTORATE 



TREATY AND LEGAL 
DIRECTORATE 



GROUPS 
OF FORCES (4) 



AIR DEFENSE 
FORCES 



NAVAL 
FORCES 



AIR FORCES 



CIVIL 
DEFENSE 



REAR 
SERVICES 



ARMAMENTS 



CONSTRUCTION 
AND BILLETING 



Figure 28. Organization of the Ministry of Defense, 1988 



704 



Armed Forces and Defense Organization 

facilities, and its industrial infrastructure. They operated all Soviet 
ground-based intercontinental, intermediate-range, and medium- 
range nuclear missiles with ranges over 1 ,000 kilometers. The Stra- 
tegic Rocket Forces also conducted all Soviet space vehicle and 
missile launches. 

In 1989 the 300,000 Soviet soldiers in the Strategic Rocket Forces 
were organized into six rocket armies comprised of three to five 
divisions, which contained regiments of ten missile launchers each. 
Each missile regiment had 400 soldiers in security, transportation, 
and maintenance units above ground. Officers manned launch sta- 
tions and command posts underground. 

In 1989 the Strategic Rocket Forces had over 1,400 intercon- 
tinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), 300 launch control centers, and 
twenty-eight missile bases. The Soviet Union had six types of oper- 
ational ICBMs; about 50 percent were heavy SS-18 and SS-19 
ICBMs, which carried 80 percent of the country's land-based ICBM 
warheads. In 1989 the Soviet Union was also producing new mo- 
bile, and hence survivable, ICBMs. A reported 100 road-mobile 
SS-25 missiles were operational, and the rail-mobile SS-24 was 
being deployed. 

The Strategic Rocket Forces also operated SS-20 intermediate- 
range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) and SS-4 medium-range ballistic 
missiles (MRBMs). Two-thirds of the road-mobile Soviet SS-20 
force was based in the western Soviet Union and was aimed at 
Western Europe. One-third was located east of the Ural Moun- 
tains and was targeted primarily against China. Older SS-4 mis- 
siles were deployed at fixed sites in the western Soviet Union. The 
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty), signed 
in December 1987, called for the elimination of all 553 Soviet SS-20 
and SS-4 missiles within three years (see Intermediate-Range 
Nuclear Forces Arms Control, ch. 17). As of mid- 1989, over 50 
percent of the SS-20 and SS-4 missiles had been eliminated. 

Ground Forces 

Despite its position as the second service in the armed forces hier- 
archy, the Ground Forces were the most politically influential Soviet 
service. Senior Ground Forces officers held all important posts 
within the Ministry of Defense as well as the General Staff. In 1989 
the Ground Forces had 2 million men, organized into four com- 
bat arms and three supporting services. 

Motorized Rifle Troops and Tank Troops 

Combat elements of the Ground Forces were organized into 
combined arms and tank armies. A combined arms army included 



705 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



SERVICE 
COMMANDER IN CHIEF 



CHIEF OF 
THE POLITICAL 
DIRECTORATE 



COMMANDER IN CHIEF 



CHIEF OF MAIN STAFF 



FIRST DEPUTY 
COMMANDER IN CHIEF 



DEPUTY 
COMMANDER IN CHIEF, 
COMMANDER OF A COMBAT ARM 



DEPUTY 
COMMANDER IN CHIEF, 
CHIEF OF A SERVICE BRANCH 



DEPUTY 
COMMANDER IN CHIEF 



DEPUTY COMMANDER IN CHIEF 
FOR ARMANENTS 



DEPUTY COMMANDER IN CHIEF 
FOR COMBAT TRAINING 



DEPUTY COMMANDER IN CHIEF 
FOR REAR SERVICES 



DEPUTY COMMANDER IN CHIEF 
FOR PERSONNEL 



DEPUTY COMMANDER IN CHIEF 
FOR MILITARY EDUCATION 
INSTITUTIONS 



DEPUTY COMMANDER IN CHIEF 
FOR PREMILITARY TRAINING 



Figure 29. Typical Organization of an Armed Service, 1988 



three motorized rifle divisions and a tank division. A tank army 
had three tank divisions and one motorized rifle division. In the 
late 1980s, the Ground Forces began to field corps that were more 
than twice the size of a single division. In 1989 the Soviet Union 
had 150 motorized rifle and 52 tank divisions in three states of read- 
iness (see Glossary). A motorized rifle division had 12,000 soldiers 
organized into three motorized rifle regiments, a tank regiment, 
an artillery regiment, an air defense regiment, surface-to-surface 
missile and antitank battalions, and supporting chemical, engineer, 
signal, reconnaissance, and rear services companies. A typical tank 
division had 10,000 soldiers organized into three tank regiments 
and one motorized rifle regiment. In 1989 the Ground Forces also 
included eight brigades of air assault, or air-mobile, units that con- 
ducted helicopter landing operations. 

The Motorized Rifle Troops have been mechanized infantry since 
1957. The Soviet Union has fielded a new model of armored 



706 



Armed Forces and Defense Organization 

personnel carrier (APC) every decade since the late 1950s, and in 
1967 it deployed the world's first infantry fighting vehicle (IFV). 
Similar to an APC , the tactically innovative IFV had much great- 
er firepower, in the form of a 73mm main gun, an antitank mis- 
sile launcher, a heavy machine gun, and firing ports that allowed 
troops to fire their individual weapons from inside the vehicle. In 
1989 the Soviet Union had an inventory of over 65,000 APCs and 
IFVs, with the latter accounting for almost half of this inventory. 

The Soviet Ground Forces viewed the tank as their primary 
weapon. In 1989 the Tank Troops had five types of main battle 
tanks, including the T-54/55, T-62, T-64, T-72, and T-80. The 
greater part of the total tank inventory of 53,000 consisted of older, 
although still highly potent, T-54/55 and T-62 tanks. 

Rocket Troops and Artillery 

The Rocket Troops and Artillery have been an important com- 
bat arm of the Ground Forces because of the Soviet belief that fire- 
power has tremendous destructive and psychological effect on the 
enemy. In 1989 the Ground Forces had eighteen artillery divisions, 
in addition to the artillery and missile units organic to armies and 
divisions. Artillery and surface-to-surface missile brigades were at- 
tached to each combined arms or tank army. An artillery regiment 
and a surface-to-surface missile battalion were parts of each Soviet 
motorized rifle and tank division. In 1989 the Rocket Troops and 
Artillery manned 1,400 "operational-tactical" surface-to-surface 
missile launchers. 

The December 1987 INF Treaty between the United States and 
the Soviet Union called for the elimination of all short-range bal- 
listic missiles with ranges between 500 and 1,000 kilometers. The 
treaty required the elimination of more than 900 Soviet SS-12 and 
SS-23 missiles. As of mid- 1989, all SS-12 missiles had been elimi- 
nated. All SS-23 missiles had to be eliminated before the end of 
1989, according to the terms of the treaty. After the reductions man- 
dated in the treaty, the Soviet battlefield missile inventory will still 
contain over 1,000 modern SS-21 missiles with a range of about 
100 kilometers that were not covered in the treaty as well as older 
SS-1 missiles, a large number of unguided free rocket over ground 
(FROG) missiles, and Scud missiles. These tactical missiles can 
deliver nuclear or chemical weapons as well as conventional mu- 
nitions. 

In 1989 the Rocket Troops and Artillery had approximately 
30,000 artillery pieces; of these, 10,000 were capable of firing con- 
ventional high-explosive, nuclear, or chemical rounds. Since the 
1970s, this powerful combat arm has fielded more than 5,000 



707 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

self-propelled 122mm and 152mm howitzers, 152mm and 203mm 
guns, and 240mm mortars. These artillery pieces, which are mount- 
ed on tank chassis, have replaced some towed artillery pieces. The 
Rocket Troops and Artillery also had truck-mounted multiple rocket 
launchers, each with forty tubes, to provide massive fire support 
for the Ground Forces. 

Air Defense of Ground Forces 

The Ground Forces relinquished control of air defense for their 
field formations in 1948 when the National Air Defense Forces — 
later renamed the Air Defense Forces — became an independent 
armed service. In 1958, however, Soviet air defense was decen- 
tralized again, and the Ground Forces acquired antiaircraft guns 
and formed tactical air defense units. In the 1960s, air defense be- 
came an integral combat arm of the Ground Forces. Since then, 
Air Defense of Ground Forces has been independent from the Air 
Defense Forces, although coordination of their respective opera- 
tions remained necessary. 

Air Defense of Ground Forces was equipped with a potent mix 
of antiaircraft artillery as well as surface-to-air missiles to defend 
Ground Forces units against attacking enemy aircraft. During the 
1970s, the Soviet military introduced five new self-propelled air 
defense and radar systems into its force structure. In 1989 Air 
Defense of Ground Forces operated 5,000 surface-to-air missiles 
and 12,000 antiaircraft guns organized into brigades, regiments, 
and batteries. As of 1989, combined arms and tank armies had 
air defense brigades equipped with high-altitude SA-4 surface- 
to-air missiles. Motorized rifle and tank divisions had air defense 
regiments with the mobile SA-6 or SA-8 for medium- to low-level 
protection. Ground Forces regiments had SA-9, SA-13, and 
ZSU-23-4 antiaircraft gun batteries. Motorized rifle and tank bat- 
talions had surface-to-air missile platoons equipped with new low- 
altitude, shoulder- fired SA-16 and older SA-7 missiles. 

Chemical Troops, Engineer Troops, and Signal Troops 

The Chemical Troops, Engineer Troops, and Signal Troops were 
independent branches that provided support to all the military ser- 
vices, but principally to the Ground Forces. The chiefs of these 
services reported directly to the minister of defense. Units of the 
Chemical Troops, Engineer Troops, and Signal Troops responded 
to the in-branch chief regarding administrative and technical matters 
but were operationally subordinate to the commander of the for- 
mation to which they were attached. Chemical Troops, Engineer 



708 





T-72 tank 

Courtesy United States Defense Intelligence Agency 



Troops, and Signal Troops were organized into battalions and com- 
panies within armies and divisions. 

The general mission of the supporting troops was to facilitate 
the advance of the Ground Forces and to eliminate obstacles block- 
ing their path. The Signal Troops operated tactical radio and wire 
communications networks and intercepted enemy signals for combat 
intelligence purposes. They also operated strategic underground 
cable, microwave, and satellite communications systems. The 
Engineer Troops were principally combat engineers. They oper- 
ated the self-propelled bridging vehicles and amphibious ferries that 
tanks and armored vehicles depend on to cross deep rivers. In war- 
time the Engineer Troops would also clear mines, antivehicle ob- 
stacles, and battlefield debris for the Ground Forces. 

The mission of the Chemical Troops was to defend the armed 
forces against the effects of "weapons of mass destruction" — 
nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) weapons. With 50,000 
soldiers in 1989, the Chemical Troops constituted the world's larg- 
est NBC defense force. The Chemical Troops would perform NBC 
reconnaissance; mark contaminated areas; and decontaminate 
personnel, weapons, and terrain during wartime. They operated 
30,000 armored combat vehicles equipped for NBC reconnaissance 
and truck-mounted systems equipped to spray decontaminating 



709 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

solutions on the surface areas of tanks, combat vehicles, and air- 
craft. The Chemical Troops demonstrated the use of helicopters 
for NBC defense during the large-scale radiation cleanup opera- 
tion after the Chernobyl' (see Glossary) nuclear reactor accident 
in April 1986. In 1989 the Chemical Troops did not operate offen- 
sive delivery systems. Yet the strength of Soviet chemical defense 
provided an offensive potential by enhancing the ability of Soviet 
forces to fight on contaminated battlefields. Thus, supported by 
the Chemical Troops, Soviet forces were better prepared than any 
other in the world for NBC operations. 

Air Forces 

In 1989 the Air Forces had 450,000 personnel in three combat 
arms and one supporting branch, the Aviation Engineering Ser- 
vice. The Air Forces also provided and trained prospective cos- 
monauts for the Soviet space program. Air Forces personnel 
operated all military aircraft except aircraft belonging to the Air 
Defense Forces and the Naval Forces. In 1989 the Air Forces were 
organized into air armies consisting of several air divisions. Each 
air division had three air regiments with three squadrons of about 
twelve aircraft each. 

Strategic Air Armies 

The Strategic Air Armies were organized in the late 1970s from 
elements of Long-Range Aviation. Their mission was to attack the 
enemy's strategic delivery systems and infrastructure, including 
missile and bomber bases. The Strategic Air Armies were organized 
into five air armies of bomber aircraft of several types. In 1989 
these included Tu-95 long-range strategic bombers, a type first 
deployed in the late 1950s and continuously upgraded since then. 
Since the early 1980s, more than seventy of these bombers have 
been modified to carry air-launched cruise missiles (ALCMs). A 
new intercontinental-range bomber, the Tu-160, which also bears 
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) designation Black- 
jack, became operational in 1989. In the late 1980s, long-range 
bombers carried a small, but increasing, percentage of all Soviet 
strategic nuclear weapons. 

Although its name implies an intercontinental mission, most Stra- 
tegic Air Armies aircraft were medium- and short-range bombers. 
In 1989 the Soviet Union had Tu-16, Tu-22, and Tu-26 medium- 
range bombers. The Tu-16 and Tu-22 aircraft entered service in 
large numbers in the early 1960s. The Tu-26, sometimes called 
the Tu-22M and designated the Backfire bomber, was first fielded 
in 1974. In 1989 the Strategic Air Armies also included Su-24 



710 



Armed Forces and Defense Organization 

fighter-bombers, which had a combat radius of over 1,000 kilo- 
meters. Medium-range bombers and fighter-bombers would sup- 
port military operations by striking the enemy's nuclear delivery 
systems, airfields, air defense systems, and command, control, and 
communications facilities in a theater of war. 

Frontal Aviation 

Frontal Aviation was the Soviet Union's tactical air force assigned 
to the military districts and the groups of forces. Its mission was 
to provide air support to Ground Forces units. Frontal Aviation 
cooperated closely with the Air Defense Aviation arm of the Air 
Defense Forces. Protected by the latter' s fighter- interceptors, Fron- 
tal Aviation in wartime would deliver conventional, nuclear, or 
chemical ordnance on the enemy's supply lines and troop concen- 
trations to interdict its combat operations. It would be under the 
operational control of Ground Forces field commanders. In 1989 
Frontal Aviation was divided into sixteen air armies composed of 
fighter, fighter-bomber, tactical reconnaissance, and electronic war- 
fare aircraft. 

In 1989 Frontal Aviation operated about 5,000 fixed- and rotary- 
wing combat and reconnaissance aircraft, which included 270 
Su-25, 650 Su-17, and 1,050 MiG-27 ground attack aircraft. It 
also operated 450 MiG-29 and 350 Su-24 deep interdiction fighter- 
bombers, in addition to the 450 that belonged to the Strategic Air 
Armies. The Air Forces used the heavily armed Su-25, first de- 
ployed in 1979, effectively during the early years of the war in 
Afghanistan when mujahidin forces lacked modern air defense 
systems. 

During the 1980s, the Soviet Union doubled the size of its force 
of helicopters. Helicopter regiments and squadrons were attached 
to Frontal Aviation's air armies to provide tactical mobility for, 
and additional fire support to, the Ground Forces. The Mi-6, Mi-8, 
and Mi- 2 6 helicopters would transport motorized rifle units and 
equipment into battle or land assault units behind enemy lines. 
The Mi-24, often referred to as the Hind, was the most heavily 
armed helicopter in the world. It was used extensively in both fire 
support and air assault roles in Afghanistan. In 1989 the Soviet 
Union was testing a new helicopter, the Mi-28, designed to be an 
antitank helicopter. 

Military Transport Aviation 

Military Transport Aviation provided rapid strategic mobility 
for the armed forces. Its missions were to transport the Airborne 
Troops for rapid intervention by parachute and to supply and 



711 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

resupply Soviet forces abroad, and deliver arms and military equip- 
ment to Soviet allies around the world. In 1989 Military Trans- 
port Aviation had five air divisions, including 200 An-12, 55 An-22, 
340 11-76, and 5 An-124 transport aircraft. Having entered ser- 
vice only in 1987, the An-124 was the first Soviet transport that 
could lift outsized equipment such as main battle tanks. 

In addition to these military transports, in wartime the 1,600 
aircraft of Aeroflot, the national airline, would be used to augment 
the capabilities of Military Transport Aviation (see table 46, Ap- 
pendix A). For this reason, the Ministry of Civil Aviation closely 
coordinated its activities with the General Staff and the Air Forces. 
Aeroflot flight crews, for example, were reserve officers of the Air 
Forces. Moreover, in 1989 the minister of civil aviation was an 
active-duty general officer. 

Military Transport Aviation assumed a high-profile role in for- 
eign policy in the 1970s when it airlifted weapons to such allies 
as Egypt, Syria, Ethiopia, and Angola. In December 1979, its trans- 
port aircraft flew 1 50 sorties to drop and land an Airborne Troops 
division and its equipment into Afghanistan. Western analysts es- 
timated that Military Transport Aviation can lift one Airborne 
Troops division a distance of 4,000 kilometers. With Aeroflot trans- 
ports and passenger aircraft, three divisions can be lifted at once. 

Air Defense Forces 

The National Air Defense Forces became a separate armed ser- 
vice in 1948 and were given the mission of defending the Soviet 
industrial, military, and administrative centers and the armed forces 
against strategic bombing. After Air Defense of Ground Forces was 
formed in 1958, the National Air Defense Forces focused on stra- 
tegic aerospace and theater air defense. Around 1980 the National 
Air Defense Forces yielded responsibility for theater antiaircraft 
systems to Air Defense of Ground Forces and was renamed the 
Air Defense Forces. In 1989 the Air Defense Forces had more than 
500,000 personnel and operated the world's most extensive stra- 
tegic air defense network. 

Antiaircraft Rocket Troops and Air Defense Aviation 

In 1989 the Antiaircraft Rocket Troops manned 12,000 strategic 
surface-to-air missile launchers at 1,400 sites inside the Soviet 
Union. These forces were organized into brigades of launch bat- 
talions. Soviet SA-3 and SA-5 antiaircraft missiles, first produced 
in the 1960s, together with older SA-1 and SA-2 missiles, con- 
stituted over 90 percent of the Soviet surface-to-air missile inventory. 
In the late 1980s, the new SA-10 was entering service to replace 



712 



MiG-23 fighter aircraft armed with antiaircraft missiles 

Courtesy United States Navy 
Scud-B ballistic missile on a transporter-erector-launcher 
Courtesy United States Defense Intelligence Agency 



713 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

SA-1 and SA-2 missiles. The Soviet Union also had another anti- 
aircraft missile, the SA-1 2, under development. Western authori- 
ties believed the SA-10 and SA-1 2 had improved capabilities to 
destroy aircraft and missiles at low altitudes. In support of the Air 
Defense Forces, the Radiotechnical Troops operated 10,000 ground- 
based air surveillance radars for surface-to-air missile operations. 
In addition, the air defense systems of the Warsaw Pact countries 
were highly integrated into the Soviet network, effectively extend- 
ing the range of Soviet early warning capabilities. 

The other combat arm of the Air Defense Forces, Air Defense 
Aviation, had the mission of preventing aircraft and cruise mis- 
siles from entering Soviet airspace. In wartime it would strive to 
establish air superiority and provide air cover for Frontal Avia- 
tion's deep strike and ground attack aircraft. In 1989 Air Defense 
Aviation had 2,000 fighter-interceptor aircraft organized into air 
regiments. The Su-15, MiG-23, and MiG-25, first produced in 
the late 1960s and early 1970s, constituted 80 percent of Air Defense 
Aviation's inventory. The Soviet Union's newest interceptors, the 
MiG-31 and Su-27, deployed in the early 1980s, represented 10 
percent of the force in 1989. The MiG-29, which first appeared 
in 1984, may also eventually be deployed with Air Defense Avia- 
tion. These new fighter-interceptors had "look-down, shoot-down" 
radars for engaging aircraft and cruise missiles penetrating Soviet 
airspace at low altitudes. Since the mid-1980s, the Soviet Union 
has built four new airborne warning and control system (AWACS) 
aircraft on an 11-76 airframe. These AWACS aircraft have improved 
Air Defense Aviation's ability to direct interceptors against enemy 
bombers, fighters, and cruise missiles in aerial combat. 

Although equipped with numerous modern weapons systems, 
the Air Defense Forces have made operational errors that have 
raised serious questions about their command, control, and com- 
munications systems and training. In September 1983, Soviet inter- 
ceptors shot down a South Korean passenger jet that strayed into 
Soviet airspace over Sakhalin. In May 1987, Mathias Rust, a citizen 
of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), flew his pri- 
vate airplane into Soviet airspace and landed in Red Square in 
Moscow. As a result, the commander in chief of the Air Defense 
Forces, a former fighter pilot, was fired and replaced with a high- 
ranking Ground Forces officer who had extensive combined arms 
experience. 

Missile and Space Defenses 

Missile and space defenses have been effective arms of the Air 
Defense Forces since the mid-1960s. In 1989 the Soviet Union had 



714 



Armed Forces and Defense Organization 

the world's only operational antiballistic missile (ABM) and anti- 
satellite (ASAT) systems. 

The Soviet Union deployed its first ABM defense system around 
Moscow in 1964. It consisted of surface-to-air missiles that could 
be launched to destroy incoming ballistic missiles. The Soviet leaders 
have continually upgraded and developed the capabilities of this 
initial system. A major modernization of interceptor missiles began 
in the late 1970s, and by 1989 the Soviet Union had up to thirty- 
two improved SH-04 launchers in operation and a fundamentally 
new SH-08 interceptor missile under development. The newest 
SA-10 and SA-12 surface-to-air missiles reportedly also had a lim- 
ited capability to destroy cruise, tactical, and possibly even stra- 
tegic ballistic missiles. Such a capability would tend to blur the 
distinction between missile defense and strategic air defense sys- 
tems. 

In 1989 the Radiotechnical Troops operated eleven ground-based 
radars and numerous satellites to provide strategic early warning 
of enemy missile launches. They also manned six large phased- 
array radars for ballistic missile detection. These radars could also 
serve as target acquisition and tracking radars to guide ABM 
launchers as part of a nationwide defense against ballistic missiles. 
In 1989 the Soviet Union was building three additional sites for 
phased-array radars. 

The Soviet Union has had an operational ASAT interceptor sys- 
tem since 1966. In wartime it would launch a satellite into the same 
orbit as an opponent's satellite. The ASAT satellite would then 
maneuver nearby and detonate a conventional fragmentation or 
a nuclear warhead to destroy its target. Thus, the interceptor system 
has posed a threat to an adversary's command, control, and com- 
munications, navigation, reconnaissance, and intelligence-gathering 
satellites in low-earth orbits, a capability that would be critical in 
wartime. 

By 1989 the Soviet Union was spending an estimated US$1 bil- 
lion annually on scientific research into advanced technologies with 
potentially great ASAT and ABM applications, including ground- 
based laser, particle beam, radio frequency, and kinetic energy 
weapons. Soviet space programs also served Soviet missile and space 
defenses. In 1989 the Soviet effort in space was a broad-based one 
that included approximately 100 launches yearly, development of 
a reusable space shuttle and a spacecraft, and deployment of a third 
generation manned space station. These capabilities could also be 
used, for example, to conduct military operations in space, to repair 
and defend satellites, or to build and operate weapons platforms. 



715 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Many Western analysts have concluded that the military directs 
the Soviet civilian space program. 

Naval Forces 

Before 1962 the Soviet Naval Forces were primarily a coastal 
defense force. The Cuban missile crisis and United States quaran- 
tine of Cuba in 1962, however, made the importance of ocean- 
going naval forces clear to the Soviet Union. In 1989 the Soviet 
Naval Forces had nearly 500,000 servicemen organized into five 
combat arms and gave the Soviet Union a capability of projecting 
power beyond Europe and Asia. 

Submarine Forces 

Submarines were the most important component of the Soviet 
Naval Forces. In 1989 the Soviet Union had the largest number 
of ballistic missile submarines in the world. Most of the sixty- two 
ballistic missile submarines could launch their nuclear- armed mis- 
siles against intercontinental targets from Soviet home waters. The 
deployment of mobile land-based ICBMs in the late 1980s, how- 
ever, could reduce the importance of ballistic missile submarines 
as the Soviet Union's most survivable strategic force. 

Soviet attack submarines have had an antisubmarine warfare 
(ASW) mission. In wartime the attack submarine force — 203 boats 
in 1989 — would attempt to destroy the enemy's ballistic missile and 
attack submarines. Since 1973 the Soviet Union has deployed ten 
different attack submarine classes, including five new types since 
1980. In 1989 the Soviet Union also had sixty-six guided missile 
submarines for striking the enemy's land targets, surface combatant 
groups, and supply convoys. 

Surface Forces 

Between 1962 and the early 1970s, the Soviet Union's World 
War II-era Naval Forces became a modern guided missile cruiser 
and destroyer force. In addition, in the late 1970s the Soviet Union 
launched its first nuclear-powered Kirov-class batde cruiser, its third 
class of guided missile cruisers, and two new classes of guided missile 
destroyers. These surface forces have had the peacetime task of sup- 
porting Soviet allies in the Third World through port visits and 
arms shipments as well as visibly asserting Soviet power and in- 
terests on the high seas. In wartime, they would conduct both anti- 
ship and antisubmarine operations. 

A variety of auxiliary ships supported the Naval Forces and the 
armed forces in general. In 1989 the Soviet Union operated sixty- 
three intelligence- gathering vessels, manned by naval reservists and 
equipped with surface-to-air missiles. It also had the world's largest 



716 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

fleet of oceanographic survey and marine research vessels. Over 
500 ships gathered and processed data on the world's oceans that 
would be crucial to the Soviet Union in wartime. In 1989 eleven 
specially equipped vessels, including the new Marshal Nedelin class, 
monitored and tracked Soviet and foreign space launches. Yet 
Western experts have noted that the Soviet Naval Forces still lacked 
enough specialized underway replenishment vessels to provide ade- 
quate logistical support to naval combatants at sea. 

Naval Aviation 

Naval Aviation was primarily land based; its main mission was 
to conduct air strikes on enemy ships and fleet support infrastruc- 
ture. The importance attached to its antiship mission was shown 
by the fact that Naval Aviation has received almost as many Tu-26 
bombers as have the Strategic Air Armies. Naval Aviation also 
provided ASW and general reconnaissance support for naval oper- 
ations. 

In 1989 Naval Aviation consisted of nearly 1 ,000 fixed- wing air- 
craft and over 300 helicopters. The Naval Aviation fleet included 
130 Tu-26 and 230 Tu-16 medium- range bombers armed with air- 
to-surface cruise missiles for carrying out antiship strikes. Naval 
Aviation also had 100 Su-17 and Su-24 fighter-bombers that pro- 
vided close air support to Naval Infantry. Older aircraft in Naval 
Aviation's inventory have been converted into ASW and maritime 
reconnaissance platforms. 

Since the 1970s, the Soviet Naval Forces have attempted to over- 
come their major weakness — fleet air defense beyond the range of 
land-based aircraft — by deploying four Kiev-class aircraft carriers. 
These carriers each had a squadron of Yak-38 fighters. In the late 
1980s, the Soviet Union was also constructing and fitting out its 
first two Tbilisi-class carriers. Western observers expected that a 
variant of the new Su-27 or MiG-29 fighter would become the main 
Soviet carrier-based aircraft. Soviet carriers also operated Ka-25 
and Ka-27 naval helicopters for ASW reconnaissance, targeting, 
and search-and-rescue missions. 

Naval Infantry 

In the early 1960s, Naval Infantry became a combat arm of the 
Soviet Naval Forces. In 1989 Naval Infantry consisted of 18,000 
marine troops organized into one division and three brigades. Naval 
Infantry had its own amphibious versions of standard armored 
vehicles and tanks used by the Ground Forces. Its primary war- 
time missions would be to seize and hold strategic straits or islands 
and to make seaborne tactical landings behind enemy lines. The 
Soviet Naval Forces had over eighty landing ships as well as two 



718 



Armed Forces and Defense Organization 

Ivan Rogov-class amphibious assault docks. The latter were as- 
sault ships that could transport one infantry battalion with forty 
armored vehicles and their amphibious landing craft. At seventy- 
five units, the Soviet Union had the world's largest inventory of 
air-cushion assault craft. In addition, many of the Soviet merchant 
fleet's (Morflot) 2,500 oceangoing ships could off-load weapons and 
supplies in an amphibious landing. 

Coastal Defense Forces 

Protecting the coasts of the Soviet Union from attack or inva- 
sion from the sea has remained one of the most important mis- 
sions of the Naval Forces. To defend an extensive coastline along 
the Arctic and Pacific oceans and the Baltic, Black, and Caspian 
seas, the Soviet Union has deployed a sizable and diverse force. 
Defending naval bases from attack has been the primary focus of 
the Coastal Defense Forces. In 1989 the Coastal Rocket and Ar- 
tillery Troops, consisting of a single division, operated coastal ar- 
tillery and naval surface-to-surface missile launchers along the 
approaches to naval bases. A large number of surface combatants, 
including light frigates, missile attack boats, submarine chasers, 
guided missile combatants, amphibious craft, and patrol boats of 
many types, also participated in coastal defense. 

Airborne Troops and Special Purpose Forces 

The Soviet Union had substantial specialized forces having mis- 
sions and subordinations distinct from those of the regular mili- 
tary services. The Airborne Troops, subordinated to the Supreme 
High Command in wartime, were closely linked to the Ground 
Forces and to Military Transport Aviation. The Special Purpose 
Forces (Voiska spetsial'nogo nazacheniia — Spetsnaz), designed to 
operate deep behind enemy lines, were controlled by the General 
Staffs Main Intelligence Directorate (see Glossary). 

In 1989 the Airborne Troops were more numerous than all the 
other airborne forces of the world combined. The Airborne Troops 
consisted of seven divisions. Each division had 7,000 troops or- 
ganized into three paratroop regiments and an artillery regiment. 
The Airborne Troops had specially designed air-transportable and, 
in some cases, air-droppable equipment. Their inventory included 
light infantry fighting vehicles for transporting and protecting air- 
borne forces on the ground and self-propelled 85mm assault guns 
to provide them with firepower. 

The Airborne Troops were the primary rapid intervention force 
of the armed forces. They spearheaded the Soviet invasions of 
Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Afghanistan in 1979 by seizing the 



719 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

airports in Prague and Kabul, respectively. The performance of 
the Airborne Troops in Afghanistan raised their status as an elite 
combat arm. 

The Spetsnaz has been the subject of intense speculation among 
Western experts because little is known about it. In 1989 the Soviet 
Ground Forces had about 30,000 Spetsnaz troops organized into 
sixteen brigades. In 1989 the Soviet Naval Forces also had four 
elite naval Spetsnaz brigades trained to reconnoiter, disrupt, or 
sabotage enemy naval installations and coastal defenses. One 
Western view held that, in wartime, small Spetsnaz teams would 
be assigned reconnaissance missions up to several hundred kilo- 
meters behind enemy lines. Spetsnaz units would then provide 
Soviet forces with targeting data on important enemy rear area fa- 
cilities. Another view was that Spetsnaz troops would be emplaced 
weeks before a war to assassinate the enemy's political and mili- 
tary leaders; to sabotage its airfields; to destroy its nuclear weapons 
facilities; and to disrupt its command, control, and communica- 
tions systems. Proponents of this view asserted that Spetsnaz teams 
assassinated the unpopular Afghan communist leader Hafizullah 
Amin before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979. 

Rear Services 

In 1989 a deputy minister of defense served as chief of Rear Ser- 
vices for the Soviet armed forces. The Rear Services supplied the 
armed forces with ammunition, fuel, spare parts, food, clothing, 
and other materiel. In 1989 the chief of the Rear Services had nine 
main and central directorates and four supporting services under 
his command. The deputy commanders in chief for rear services 
of the armed services, the deputy commanders for rear services 
of territorial commands, and nearly 1.5 million soldiers reported 
to him. 

The Central Military Transportation Administration was the 
primary traffic management organization for the armed forces, coor- 
dinating and planning supply movements by all means of trans- 
port. The Central Food Supply Administration both procured food 
from civilian agricultural enterprises (see Glossary) and operated 
a military state farm (see Glossary) system to supply troops, par- 
ticularly those serving in remote areas. Similarly, the Central 
Clothing Supply Administration had its own clothing factories to 
manufacture uniforms and specialized gear. The main and cen- 
tral directorates operated post exchange, health care, and recrea- 
tional facilities for military personnel. The Rear Services also 
provided financial reports on armed forces activities to party and 
government organs. 



720 



Armed Forces and Defense Organization 

The chief of the Rear Services commanded the Railroad Troops, 
Road Troops, Pipeline Troops, and Automotive Troops. The mis- 
sion of these supporting services was to construct and maintain the 
Soviet Union's military transport infrastructure. The Automotive 
Troops, for example, provided the drivers and mechanics needed 
to maintain and drive cargo trucks loaded with supplies from rail- 
heads to operational units in the field. After the initial airlift of 
Soviet forces and equipment into Afghanistan in December 1979, 
these troops built permanent rail lines, roads, and pipelines be- 
tween the Soviet Union and Afghanistan to resupply the Soviet 
forces in that country. 

Formerly divided among independent maintenance, medical, and 
motor transport companies, the provision of rear services in Soviet 
regiments has become the responsibility of unified materiel sup- 
port units. As in most armies, these materiel support units were 
subordinate to operational commanders, although they worked with 
the next highest chief of rear services on technical matters. 

Construction and Troop Billeting was an independent support- 
ing service, similar to the Rear Services, headed by another deputy 
minister of defense. Construction and Troop Billeting served as 
a large, mobile force of cheap labor to erect military bases and troop 
quarters as well as civilian and government buildings. The service 
has been used to complete high-priority projects and to work in 
harsh environments. Construction and Troop Billeting has built 
military installations in the Soviet Far East since 1969, major air- 
ports, and the Moscow Olympics complex. The service has also 
worked on Siberian natural gas pipelines and the Baykal-Amur 
Main Line (BAM — see Glossary). 

Civil Defense 

Civil defense was another part of Soviet strategic defense. It origi- 
nated with the large-scale relocation of defense industries from the 
western Soviet Union to east of the Ural Mountains in 1941 . Civil 
defense reappeared in the late 1940s as antiaircraft units were at- 
tached to Soviet factories to defend them against strategic bomb- 
ing. By the early 1970s, the emphasis on civil defense increased, 
and the chief of Civil Defense became a deputy minister of defense. 
Each union republic had a general officer as the chief of civil defense 
in the republic. 

In 1989 the purpose of civil defense was to provide protection 
for leadership and population in wartime and to ensure the Soviet 
Union's ability to continue production of military materiel during 
a nuclear or a protracted conventional war. Officers from Civil 
Defense were attached to union republic, oblast (see Glossary), raion 



721 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

(see Glossary), and municipal governments, as well as to large 
industrial and agricultural enterprises, and assigned to supervise 
civil defense work, organization, and training. These staff officers 
developed and implemented detailed plans for the wartime reloca- 
tion of important defense industrial facilities and the evacuation 
of labor forces to alternative sites. They supervised the construc- 
tion of blast shelters and other installations to ensure that these 
structures could withstand nuclear strikes. Civil Defense operated 
a network of 1 ,500 underground shelters that could protect 175,000 
top party and government officials. In 1989 Civil Defense had 
150,000 personnel. 

After a nuclear exchange, the civil defense effort would be di- 
rected at reestablishing essential military production through decon- 
tamination, first aid, and civil engineering work to clear collapsed 
structures and to restore power supplies, transportation, and com- 
munications. Civil Defense trained in peacetime by conducting 
simulations of the aftermath of a nuclear attack and small-scale 
evacuation exercises. It was also called on to fight fires, conduct 
rescue operations, decontaminate areas affected by nuclear and 
chemical accidents, and provide natural disaster relief. 

Specialized and Paramilitary Forces 

Under Soviet law, two armed services were outside the control 
of the Ministry of Defense but were nonetheless part of the Soviet 
armed forces. These services, the Internal Troops and the Border 
Troops, were subordinate to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and 
the KGB, respectively. Although often termed "militarized police," 
the Internal Troops and the Border Troops were military organi- 
zations, equipped, like motorized rifle regiments, with tanks and 
armored personnel carriers. 

Internal Troops 

In 1989 the Internal Troops had a personnel strength of about 
340,000 soldiers. These troops had the mission of suppressing 
demonstrations, revolts, riots, strikes, or other challenges to the 
regime that the militia (police) could not contain (see Internal 
Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, ch. 19). The use of In- 
ternal Troops instead of the Ground Forces in these situations 
helped to preserve the favorable image of the latter with the popu- 
lation. In extreme circumstances, the Internal Troops also served 
as the party's counterweight to the military services. 

In addition to these peacetime roles, the Internal Troops also have 
been assigned wartime missions. In time of war, they would sup- 
port frontline operations by providing rear security against enemy 



722 



Armed Forces and Defense Organization 



sabotage, defending supply and communications lines, and operat- 
ing prisoner-of-war and penal battalions. In the early days of World 
War II, the Internal Troops manned machine gun detachments 
located behind Soviet frondine units. The detachments were charged 
with firing on Red Army soldiers who tried to retreat or desert. 

Border Troops 

The mission of the Border Troops, which included 230,000 per- 
sonnel in 1989, was to prevent unauthorized entry by foreigners 
into the Soviet Union and to keep Soviet citizens from leaving the 
country illegally (see Border Troops of the Committee for State 
Security, ch. 19). The troops patrolled clearly demarcated strips 
along Soviet state frontiers that contained antivehicle obstacles, 
fences, and barbed wire. The Border Troops used guard dogs, 
sophisticated electronic surveillance equipment and sensors, and 
helicopters to perform their duties over vast, sparsely populated 
frontier regions. 

The Border Troops also guarded the Soviet Union's oceanic 
frontiers. Its Maritime Border Troops operated within the twelve- 
mile limit of Soviet territorial waters and were equipped with 
frigates, fast patrol boats, hydrofoils, helicopters, and light aircraft. 

In wartime the Border Troops would become a frontline combat 
service. Stationed on the frontiers, Border Troops units absorbed 
the brunt of Nazi Germany's surprise invasion of the Soviet Union 
in June 1941 and fought defensive actions against the German army. 
The Border Troops also saw combat action in 1969 in border clashes 
with Chinese soldiers on islands in the Ussuri River. 

In addition to the Border Troops, the KGB had other troops 
engaged in military- related activities that were not mentioned in 
legislation governing the armed forces (see Internal Security Troops, 
ch. 19). The KGB controlled elite units that guarded the highest 
party officials and stood a continuous ceremonial guard at the Lenin 
Mausoleum. The special KGB signal troops also operated com- 
munications linking the party with the Ministry of Defense and 
the major territorial commands. Another KGB armed force guarded 
sensitive military, scientific, and industrial installations in the Soviet 
Union and, until the late 1960s, controlled Soviet nuclear warhead 
stockpiles. 

Territorial Organization of the Armed Forces 

The armed forces had a peacetime territorial organization that 
would facilitate a rapid shift to a wartime footing. In 1989 the Soviet 
Union was divided into sixteen military districts and four fleets (see 
fig. 30). In addition, one flotilla, two naval squadrons, and six major 
groups of forces were stationed outside the Soviet Union. 



723 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 




724 



Armed Forces and Defense Organization 

Military Districts 

Military districts were the basic units of Soviet military adminis- 
tration. The system of sixteen military districts had evolved in 
response to the Soviet Union's perception of threats to its secu- 
rity. For example, in 1969 the Turkestan Military District was di- 
vided to create the Central Asian Military District and enable the 
Soviet Union to double its military forces and infrastructure along 
the border with China. In wartime most military districts would 
become fronts (see Glossary). 

Senior Ground Forces officers have always commanded military 
districts, and experience in commanding a military district was ap- 
parently a prerequisite for promotion to most of the important 
Ministry of Defense positions. Commanders of military districts 
have deputy commanders responsible for specific military activi- 
ties. Each military district had a military council, which included 
the commander of the district, his first deputies — one of whom was 
also chief of staff — the chief of the political directorate for the dis- 
trict, and the first secretary of the party bureau of the union republic 
in which the district was located. 

Military districts were combined arms formations. A military 
district commander controlled not only the Ground Forces in the 
district but also the Air Forces and the Air Defense Forces (see 
fig. 31). The commanders of the Air Forces and the Air Defense 
Forces reported to the district commander on operational matters 
as well as to the main staffs of their services. The military district's 
officers worked closely with party and government officials to plan 
wartime mobilization and rear services, civil defense, and military 
training for civilians. They supervised military training in both 
civilian and military education establishments located in the dis- 
trict. Military districts coordinated activities with the Border 
Troops, which had a system of ten districts organized separately 
from the military districts. 

In 1989 twelve of Frontal Aviation's sixteen air armies were sta- 
tioned in the most important military districts. Western experts 
disagreed over the organization of the system of air defense dis- 
tricts. Some argued that as many as ten air defense districts, separate 
from military districts, still existed. It seemed more likely, however, 
that when the National Air Defense Forces became the Air Defense 
Forces after 1980, all remaining air defense districts were integrated 
into the military districts. At that time, commanders of the Air 
Defense Forces became deputy commanders of the military dis- 
tricts. Only the Moscow Air Defense District continued to be 
mentioned in the press, possibly because it operated the ABM 



725 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



MILITARY DISTRICT 
COMMANDER 



CHIEF OF 
THE POLITICAL 
DIRECTORATE 



FIRST DEPUTY 
COMMANDER 



CHIEF OF STAFF 



COMMANDERS OF 
GROUND FORCES 



COMMANDER 
OF AIR FORCES 



COMMANDER OF 
AIR DEFENSE FORCES 



CHIEF OF 
CHEMICAL TROOPS 



CHIEF OF 
SIGNAL TROOPS 



CHIEF OF 
ENGINEER TROOPS 



FIRST DEPUTY 
COMMANDER 



DEPUTY COMMANDER 
FOR COMBAT TRAINING 



DEPUTY COMMANDER 
FOR ARMAMENTS 



DEPUTY COMMANDER FOR 
REAR SERVICES 



DEPUTY COMMANDER FOR 
MILITARY EDUCATION 
INSTITUTIONS 



DEPUTY COMMANDER 
FOR CIVIL DEFENSE 



DEPUTY COMMANDER FOR 
CONSTRUCTION AND 
TROOP BILLETING 



DEPUTY COMMANDER 
FOR PREMILITARY TRAINING 



CHIEF OF 
PERSONNEL 



CHIEF OF PHYSICAL 
TRAINING AND SPORTS 



SPORTS COMMITTEE 



MILITARY PROCURACY 



MILITARY TRIBUNAL 



Figure 31. Organization of a Typical Military District, 1988 



726 



Armed Forces and Defense Organization 

system that protected the capital city and the National Command 
Authority. 

In 1989 the Ground Forces had sixty-five divisions, kept at be- 
tween 50 and 75 percent of their projected wartime strengths, in 
the westernmost military districts of the Soviet Union. The Ground 
Forces also had fifty-two divisions at less than half their wartime 
levels in the Siberian, Transbaykal, Central Asian, and Far East 
military districts along the border with China and twenty-six low- 
readiness divisions in the Transcaucasus, North Caucasus, and 
Turkestan military districts. 

Fleets, Flotillas, and Squadrons 

The command organization of the four fleets was similar to that 
of the military districts. The fleet commander had a deputy for each 
of the combat arms of the Naval Forces, and he supervised the naval 
bases and ports in the fleet's area. Each fleet had a Naval Aviation 
air army, a naval Spetsnaz brigade, and several battalions of the 
Coastal Rocket and Artillery Troops. The fleets reported to the 
Main Staff of the Naval Forces; in wartime they would come under 
the operational control of the Supreme High Command and the 
General Staff. Although the Naval Forces operated numerous flotil- 
las on inland seas and large lakes, only the Caspian Flotilla was 
operational in 1989. 

The Northern Fleet, based at Murmansk- Severomorsk, was the 
most important Soviet fleet, having a force of over 170 submarines 
in 1989. The Pacific Fleet, based at Vladivostok, had the best am- 
phibious and power projection capabilities of the Naval Forces. In 
1989 it had the only Naval Infantry division, two aircraft carriers, 
and 120 submarines. In wartime the Northern and Pacific fleets 
would become components of oceanic theaters of military opera- 
tions (teatry voennykh deistvii — TVDs; see Offensive and Defensive 
Strategic Missions, ch. 17). The Baltic and Black Sea fleets, as well 
as the Caspian Flotilla, would become maritime components of con- 
tinental TVDs in wartime. 

Since the mid-1960s, the Naval Forces have increasingly been 
deployed abroad. In 1964 the Mediterranean squadron became the 
first permanently forward-deployed Soviet naval force. Since its 
inception, it has usually had thirty-five to forty-five ships. In 1968 
the Soviet Union established an Indian Ocean squadron of fifteen 
to twenty-five ships. Access to ports and airfields in Vietnam, Syria, 
Libya, Ethiopia, the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen 
(South Yemen), and Seychelles in the 1980s has enabled the Soviet 
Naval Forces to repair their ships, fly ocean reconnaissance flights, 
and maintain these forward deployments. In 1989 Cam Ranh Bay 



727 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

in Vietnam had the largest concentration of Soviet vessels outside 
the countries of the Warsaw Pact. 

Groups of Forces Stationed Abroad 

In 1989 the Soviet Union had six major groups of forces sta- 
tioned abroad. The groups of Soviet forces in Eastern Europe in- 
cluded thirty Ground Forces divisions and four air armies in the 
German Democratic Republic (East Germany), Poland, Czecho- 
slovakia, and Hungary (see Appendix C). These groups of forces 
have been in Eastern Europe since 1945 and have been used on 
several occasions to suppress anticommunist uprisings in those coun- 
tries and keep them within the Soviet alliance system. They have 
also been the main concentration of Soviet forces against NATO. 
They were continuously manned and equipped at wartime levels. 
The Group of Soviet Forces in Germany was the most important 
Soviet territorial command. In 1989 it had 400,000 troops organized 
into nineteen divisions and five armies. Its importance was under- 
scored by the fact that it was commanded by a commander in chief, 
like the five armed services. 

When the cuts announced by Gorbachev in December 1 988 are 
completed in 1991, 50,000 Soviet troops and six Soviet tank divi- 
sions will have been withdrawn from East Germany, Czecho- 
slovakia, and Hungary (see Conventional Arms Control, ch. 17). 

In addition to its forces stationed in Eastern Europe, the Soviet 
Union continued to maintain a large troop presence in Afghanistan 
throughout most of 1988. The Soviet 40th Army's four divisions 
and other forces — 116,000 troops in all — had been fighting in 
Afghanistan for nearly nine years by late 1988. In mid- 1988 the 
Soviet Union began a full-scale withdrawal from Afghanistan. The 
withdrawal was completed by early 1989. The Soviet Union has 
also had forces stationed in Mongolia since that country became 
an ally in 1921. Under a plan articulated in a 1986 Vladivostok 
speech, Gorbachev withdrew one Soviet division, leaving four in 
Mongolia. 

The Party and the Armed Forces 

The CPSU had three mechanisms of control over the country's 
armed forces. First, the top military leaders have been systemati- 
cally integrated into the highest echelons of the CPSU and sub- 
jected to party discipline. Second, the CPSU has placed a network 
of political officers throughout the armed forces to influence the 
activities of the military. Third, the KGB, under the direction of 
the CPSU, has maintained a network of officers and informers in 
the armed forces. 



728 



Armed Forces and Defense Organization 

Political-Military Relations 

Fearing the immense popularity of the armed forces after World 
War II, Stalin demoted war hero Marshal Georgii K. Zhukov and 
took personal credit for having saved the country. After Stalin's 
death in 1953, Zhukov reemerged as a strong supporter of Nikita S. 
Khrushchev. Khrushchev rewarded Zhukov by making him min- 
ister of defense and a full Politburo member. Concern that the 
armed forces might become too powerful in politics, however, led 
to Zhukov's abrupt dismissal in the fall of 1957. But Khrushchev 
later alienated the armed forces by cutting defense expenditures 
on conventional forces in order to carry out his plans for economic 
reform. Leonid I. Brezhnev's years in power marked the height 
of party-military cooperation because he provided ample resources 
to the armed forces. In 1973 the minister of defense again became 
a full Politburo member for the first time since 1957. Yet Brezh- 
nev evidently felt threatened by the professional military, and he 
sought to create an aura of military leadership around himself in 
an effort to establish his authority over the military. 

In the early 1980s, party-military relations became strained over 
the issue of resource allocations to the armed forces. Despite a down- 
turn in economic growth, the chief of the General Staff, Nikolai V. 
Ogarkov, argued for more resources to develop advanced conven- 
tional weapons. His outspoken stance led to his removal in Sep- 
tember 1984. Ogarkov became commander in chief of the Western 
TVD, a crucial wartime command position that exists primarily 
on paper in peacetime. He was retired under Gorbachev and as- 
sumed a largely ceremonial post in the Main Inspectorate. His in- 
fluence was considerably diminished, although he continued to 
publish in the military press. 

Gorbachev, who became general secretary in March 1985, was 
a teenager during the Great Patriotic War and apparently never 
served in the armed forces. He has downgraded the role of the mili- 
tary in state ceremonies, including moving military representatives 
to the end of the leadership line-up atop the Lenin Mausoleum dur- 
ing the annual Red Square military parade on November 7 . Gor- 
bachev used the Rust incident in May 1987 as a convenient pretext 
for replacing Sergei Sokolov with Dmitrii T. Iazov as minister of 
defense (see Air Defense Forces, this ch.). Gorbachev has also em- 
phasized civilian economic priorities and "reasonable sufficiency" 
in defense over the professional military's perceived requirements. 

Military Representation in the Party 

As of 1989, only two career military ministers of defense had 
become full Politburo members. Since 1984 the minister of defense 



729 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

has been only a candidate member. The top leaders in the Minis- 
try of Defense, however, have been regularly elected as members 
or candidate members of the Central Committee. Central Com- 
mittee membership apparently has come with certain important 
posts and major field commands. The military presence in the Cen- 
tral Committee has varied little over time, normally constituting 
between 7 and 12 percent of this influential body. 

Military officers with full membership on the Central Commit- 
tee have generally included the minister of defense, the first deputy 
ministers of defense, the deputy ministers of defense, the chief of 
the Main Political Directorate of the Soviet Army and Navy, the 
chief and one or two members of the Main Inspectorate, the com- 
mander of the Moscow Military District, and the commander in 
chief of the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany. At the Twenty- 
Seventh Party Congress in February-March 1986, full Central 
Committee membership was granted to the commanders of the 
Western and Far Eastern TVDs. 

Candidate members of the Central Committee from the armed 
forces have included the commanders of all the military districts 
and fleets, the first deputy chief of the Main Political Directorate 
of the Soviet Army and Navy, the chiefs of the political directorates 
of the armed services, and the chairman of the Voluntary Society 
for Assistance to the Army, Air Force, and Navy (Dobrovol'noe 
obshchestvo sodeistviia armii, aviatsii i flotu — DOSAAF; see Glos- 
sary). All military representatives on the Central Committee were 
also deputies of the Supreme Soviet. Other military officials were 
elected to the party's Central Auditing Commission (see Central 
Auditing Commission, ch. 7). 

Party-military interaction also occurred at lower levels, and it 
enabled the armed forces to coordinate their activities with local 
party officials and draw on them for assistance. The commanders 
of military districts and fleets were usually members of the party 
bureau and deputies of the supreme soviet of the republic in which 
the district or fleet was located (see Intermediate-Level Party Or- 
ganizations, ch. 7). Other senior military officers sat on oblast, raion, 
or city party committees. 

Party Control in the Armed Forces 

The Main Political Directorate of the Soviet Army and Navy 
was responsible for party control over the armed forces. It or- 
ganized, conducted, and reported on political and ideological 
indoctrination in the armed forces, supervised the military press, 
and monitored the ideological content of military publications. 



730 



Armed Forces and Defense Organization 

The Main Political Directorate of the Soviet Army and Navy 
was subordinate to the Ministry of Defense, as well as to the CPSU 
Central Committee. It had the official status of a Central Com- 
mittee department and reported to the Central Committee outside 
the military chain of command (see Secretariat, ch. 7). These reports 
included information on the political attitudes and reliability of 
armed forces personnel and high-ranking officers in particular. The 
Central Committee's Party Building and Cadre Work Department 
used the information on political reliability supplied by the Main 
Political Directorate of the Soviet Army and Navy to approve or 
deny appointments, assignments, and promotions of professionally 
qualified officers at the rank of colonel and above (see Nomen- 
klatura, ch. 7). 

The Main Political Directorate of the Soviet Army and Navy 
supervised a network of political organizations and officers within 
the armed forces. Every armed service, territorial command, and 
supporting service had a political directorate. Service branches, di- 
visions, and military education institutions had political sections, 
which were smaller than directorates. Each political section had 
a small staff that included a chief, a deputy chief, several senior 
political instructors, and officers responsible for ideology and 
propaganda, party organizational work, and the Komsomol (see 
Glossary). A party commission of high-ranking personnel was at- 
tached to each political directorate and section. A deputy com- 
mander for political affairs was assigned to each unit of company, 
battery, and squadron size or larger (see fig. 32). Smaller military 
units had primary party organizations (PPOs — see Glossary). Each 
PPO had a secretary, and secretaries met in their regiment's or 
ship's party committee to elect a party bureau. About 80 percent 
of all companies in the Ground Forces had party organizations. 
They were present in half the company- sized units of the armed 
forces as a whole. 

A deputy commander for political affairs (zamestiteV komandira 
po politicheskoi chasti — zampolit) served as a political commissar of 
the armed forces. A zampolit supervised party organizations and 
conducted "party political work" within a military unit. He lec- 
tured troops on Marxism-Leninism (see Glossary), the Soviet view 
of international issues, recent CPSU decisions and documents, and 
the party's tasks for the armed forces. For Soviet military person- 
nel, political training averaged between two and four hours every 
week. It was usually squeezed into what might otherwise be off- 
duty hours and was therefore widely resented. The zampolit was 
also responsible for resolving morale, disciplinary, and interpersonal 



731 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



POLITBURO 



CENTRAL COMMITTEE 



1 



PARTY BUILDING 
AND CADRE WORK 
DEPARTMENT 



MAIN POLITICAL 
DIRECTORATE OF THE 
SOVIET ARMY AND NAVY 



DIRECTORATES 



MILITARY PRESS 



PARTY BUILDING 
AND CADRE WORK 



AGITATION 
AND PROPAGANDA 



PERSONNEL 



SOCIAL SCIENCES 



ARMED 
SERVICES 
POLITICAL 
DIRECTORATES (5) 



MINISTRY 

OF 
DEFENSE 



DEPARTMENTS 



KOMSOMOL WORK 



MILITARY-SOCIOLOGICAL 
RESEARCH 



SOCIAL SCIENCES 
TEACHING 



TECHNICAL MEANS 
OF PROPAGANDA 



CENTRAL COURSES FOR 
POLITICAL WORKERS 



GROUPS OF 

FORCES 
POLITICAL 
DIRECTORATES (4) 



MILITARY 
DISTRICT 
POLITICAL 
DIRECTORATES (16) 




COORDINATION 
COMMAND 




Figure 32. Apparatus of the Communist Party of the Soviet 
Union in the Armed Services, 1988 



problems, which were chronic in military units. These problems 
often involved poor living conditions, conflicts among different na- 
tionalities, and poor attitudes toward training. Like the old politi- 
cal commissars, the modern zampolit remained responsible for 
keeping soldiers, and even entire frontline combat units, from 
deserting or defecting. 



732 



Armed Forces and Defense Organization 

Since World War II, the zampolit has lost all command authority, 
although retaining the power to report to the next highest political of- 
ficer or organization on the political attitudes and performance of 
the unit's commander. Negative reports from the zampolit could exert 
considerable influence on the course of a commander's career. Yet 
under the principle of one-man command, tension between profes- 
sional and political officers has decreased. Commanders were fully 
responsible for the political state of the troops under them, and this 
responsibility forced them to allow adequate time for political 
training. 

In 1989 over 20 percent of all armed forces personnel were CPSU 
or Komsomol members. Over 90 percent of all officers in the armed 
forces were CPSU or Komsomol members. The figures for party 
membership were even higher in such armed services as the Stra- 
tegic Rocket Forces or the Border Troops, in which political relia- 
bility has been especially crucial. The Komsomol was important 
in the armed forces because most soldiers and young officers were 
in the normal age- group for Komsomol membership. 

The KGB has been another instrument of party control over the 
armed forces. Its Third Chief Directorate had special counter- 
intelligence sections that operated within regiments. The "special 
sections" used networks of informers inside units to monitor for- 
eign contacts of armed forces personnel and to protect military 
secrets. Unknown to a commander or zampolit, a KGB officer could 
be reporting on their political attitudes, outside of military or Main 
Political Directorate of the Soviet Army and Navy channels. 

Military Economics 

With the notable exceptions of Khrushchev and possibly Gor- 
bachev, Soviet leaders since the late 1920s have emphasized mili- 
tary production over investment in the civilian economy. As a result, 
the Soviet Union has produced some of the world's most advanced 
armaments, although it has been unable to produce basic consumer 
goods of satisfactory quality or in sufficient quantities (see Indus- 
trial Organization; The Consumer Industry, ch. 12). 

Defense Spending 

In 1988 military spending was a single line item in the state budget, 
totaling 21 billion rubles (for value of the ruble — see Glossary), or 
about US$33 billion. Given the size of the military establishment, 
however, the actual figure was at least ten times higher. Western 
experts have concluded that the 21 billion ruble figure reflected 
only operations and maintenance costs. Other military spending, 
including training, military construction, and arms production, was 



733 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

possibly concealed within the budgets of all-union ministries and 
state committees. The amount spent on Soviet weapons research 
and development was an especially well-guarded state secret. Since 
the mid-1980s, the Soviet Union has devoted between 15 and 17 
percent of its annual gross national product (GNP — see Glossary) 
to military spending, according to United States government 
sources. Until the early 1980s, Soviet defense expenditures rose 
between 4 and 7 percent per year. Since then, they have slowed 
as the yearly growth in Soviet GNP slipped to about 2 percent on 
average. In 1987 Gorbachev and other party officials discussed the 
extension of glasnos? to military affairs through the publication of 
a detailed Soviet defense budget. In early 1989, Gorbachev an- 
nounced a military budget of 77.3 billion rubles, but Western 
authorities estimated the budget to be about twice that. 

Military Industries and Production 

The integration of the party, government, and military in the 
Soviet Union has been most evident in the area of defense-related 
industrial production. The Defense Council made decisions on the 
development and production of major weapons systems. The 
Defense Industry Department of the Central Committee supervised 
all military industries as the executive agent of the Defense Coun- 
cil. Within the government, the deputy chairman of the Council 
of Ministers headed the Military Industrial Commission. The Mili- 
tary Industrial Commission coordinated the activities of many 
industrial ministries, state committees, research and development 
organizations, and factories and enterprises that designed and 
produced arms and equipment for the armed forces. 

The State Planning Committee (Gosudarstvennyi planovyi 
komitet — Gosplan) had an important role in directing necessary 
supplies and resources to military industries. The main staff and 
deputy commander in chief for armaments of each armed service 
first determined their "tactical-technical" requirements for weapons 
and equipment and forwarded them to the General Staff, which 
evaluated and altered them to conform to overall strategic and oper- 
ational plans. Then the deputy minister of defense for armaments 
transmitted the General Staffs decisions to industrial ministries 
engaged in military production. He controlled several thousand 
senior military officers who represented the military within the 
industrial ministries. These military representatives supervised the 
entire process of military production from design through final as- 
sembly. They inspected, and had the authority to reject, all out- 
put not meeting the military's specifications and quality control 
standards. 



734 



Armed Forces and Defense Organization 

In 1989 the defense industry consisted of a number of industrial 
ministries subordinate to the Council of Ministers. The names of 
most of these ministries did not indicate the types of weapons 
or military equipment they produced. The Ministry of Medium 
Machine Building manufactured nuclear warheads. The Minis- 
try of General Machine Building produced ballistic missiles (see 
fig. 33; Machine Building and Metal Working, ch. 12). Other 
ministries, such as the Ministry of Automotive and Agricultural 
Machine Building, also produced military equipment and compo- 
nents, but to a lesser extent of their total output. 

These defense industrial ministries operated 1 50 major arms as- 
sembly plants in addition to the more than 1,000 factories that 
produced components for military equipment. Each ministry had 
a central design office and several design bureaus attached to it. 
The design bureaus, named for the chief designers who headed them 
in the past, built competing prototypes of weapons based on the 
military's specifications. The central design office then selected the 
best design and, if the military approved it, began serial produc- 
tion. The aircraft design bureaus were best known because Soviet 
aircraft carry their designations. The Mikoian-Gurevich (MiG) and 
Sukhoi (Su) bureaus designed fighters; the Antonov (An), Iliushin 
(II), and Tupolev (Tu) bureaus developed transport and bomber 
aircraft. The Mil (Mi) and Kamov (Ka) bureaus designed heli- 
copters. 

The high priority given to military production has traditionally 
enabled military- industrial enterprises to commandeer the best 
managers, labor, and materials from civilian plants. In the late 
1980s, however, Gorbachev transferred some leading defense in- 
dustry officials to the civilian sector of the economy in an effort 
to make it as efficient as its military counterpart. 

Military Technology 

The Soviet Union has taken an incremental approach to mili- 
tary research and development. The military has deployed early 
versions of weapons and equipment with limited capabilities and 
has gradually improved them. The same basic weapons system has 
usually been fielded over a period of years in several different var- 
iants. Arms designers have relied heavily on integrating compo- 
nents from earlier models into new systems in order to provide 
stability and compatibility in the production process. The armed 
forces have tended to favor weapons that were produced in mass 
quantities, were reliable, and were easy to use in combat over ex- 
pensive, complex, and technologically superior armaments. Fol- 
lowing this rule of simplicity, the Soviet Union has produced many 



735 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



!"OZ 

b°o 



UJ^LU 

« 3 



If 



WlUcl 

UJ03 

<co ff 
Oll< 

<OLU 



P 

SO tr 

LllZ Z CL 
liJI<Z) 

trotr-i 

W Q 



LD>->- 

wi-CD 

igi 



lis 
pp8 




736 



Armed Forces and Defense Organization 

outstanding and tactically innovative weapons. Nevertheless, it has 
had difficulties producing more sophisticated systems, such as large 
airframes, small nuclear reactors, and quiet submarine propellers. 
These problems have forced it to resort to technological espionage 
and to copying Western designs. The State Committee for Science 
and Technology has tasked KGB officers and other Soviet officials 
in Western countries to acquire the components or technologies 
needed to produce certain armaments. 

Uniforms and Rank Insignia 

In 1989 the uniforms and rank insignia of the Soviet armed forces 
were similar for all services, except the Naval Forces. Uniforms 
of officers and enlisted men differed only in the quality of the mate- 
rial used, not in their cut and style. The services could be distin- 
guished from each other by the colors of the shoulder boards, the 
collar tabs, and the service hat bands. In each service, the uniforms 
for women generally were of the same color and fabric as those 
provided for men. Marshals, generals, and admirals wore double- 
breasted uniform coats. All services, except the Naval Forces, used 
full-length, medium gray, winter overcoats. Lower ranking enlisted 
personnel wore olive drab short overcoats. Naval personnel wore 
black overcoats in winter. In general, Soviet naval uniforms (in 
cut, color, and style) and rank insignia resembled those of foreign 
navies. 

Each service generally had five categories of uniforms: full dress, 
dress, service, field, and work, with variants for winter and summer. 
Full dress uniforms were worn during such special military occa- 
sions as formal reviews, parades, annual service holidays, ceremo- 
nies conferring promotions or military decorations, and when taking 
the military oath or performing in honor guards. Dress uniforms 
were used for national anniversaries, such as the that of the Bolshe- 
vik Revolution; for official receptions; while attending the theater; 
and as otherwise ordered. Service uniforms were worn for routine 
duty and during off-duty hours. Field uniforms were worn during 
training, maneuvers, and firing exercises. Work uniforms were 
worn while performing equipment maintenance, fatigue detail, and 
construction tasks. 

The colors of the uniforms varied according to the service and 
the category of uniform. Full dress uniforms were sea green for 
the Ground Forces and the Strategic Rocket Forces and nonavia- 
tion components of the Air Forces and the Air Defense Forces. Avi- 
ation components' uniforms were blue. Officers of all services wore 
gold belts, breeches, and boots with full dress uniforms. The dress 
uniforms resembled the full dress uniforms, except that long trousers 



737 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

and low quarter shoes were worn. The service uniforms and field 
uniforms for all services were olive drab. Officer field uniforms had 
color- suppressed insignia instead of gold, and the garrison cap or 
steel helmet was substituted for the service hat. The work uniform 
for all services was a field uniform devoid of rank insignia. It was 
usually an old field uniform or overalls worn as a protective gar- 
ment over a field uniform. 

Each of the Naval Forces four categories of uniforms (full dress, 
dress, service, and work) had seasonal variants. The full dress 
uniforms — white for summer and navy blue for the remainder of 
the year — were worn with dirks and white gloves. Dress uniforms 
were less ornate than full dress uniforms, and ribbons replaced 
medals. Service uniforms were the same as dress uniforms, but 
without dirks and white gloves. A summer service uniform varia- 
tion had a bluejacket and a garrison cap instead of a service hat. 
Junior enlisted personnel wore service uniforms, which were white, 
navy blue, white top and blue bottoms or the reverse, or other vari- 
ants in winter and summer. Their jumpers had broad light blue 
collars with three white stripes. Shipboard work uniforms were 
either gray or khaki. Lower ranked seamen wore visorless hats with 
black bands and pigtail ribbons in the back. 

All services exhibited rank insignia on shoulder boards, using 
a system of gold stripes with gold stars on colored backgrounds 
and colored piping on the edges (see fig. 34; fig. 35; fig. 36). Naval 
officers also wore sleeve stripes. Shoulder boards of marshals, gen- 
eral officers, and admirals possessed large stars on broad, ornate 
gold stripes with piping on the edges. Shoulder boards of field grade 
officers displayed three longitudinal gold stripes and smaller gold 
stars, and those of company grade officers had two longitudinal 
gold stripes and even smaller stars. Shoulder boards of warrant 
officers had two or three gold stars superimposed on a gold check- 
erboard pattern. Enlisted ranks were indicated by transverse or 
longitudinal gold stripes on shoulder boards. 

The background colors of shoulder boards, collar tabs, and service 
hat bands varied with the service and the branch of service. The 
Strategic Rocket Forces had black shoulder boards, as did the 
Rocket Troops and Artillery, Engineer Troops, Tank Troops, and 
certain other components of the Ground Forces. The Motorized 
Rifle Troops had red shoulder boards. The Air Forces and aviation 
personnel of the Air Defense Forces had light blue shoulder boards, 
as did the Airborne Troops. The Naval Forces had navy blue shoul- 
der boards (see table 54, Appendix A). Metallic insignia of gold 
or silver were also employed to identify selected branches of the 
services. Personnel belonging to one service or branch but serving 



738 



Armed Forces and Defense Organization 

in another wore the background color prescribed for the latter ser- 
vice or branch. For example, members of an artillery battalion, 
which was a component of a motorized rifle division, wore the red 
shoulder boards and collar tabs of the Motorized Rifle Troops but 
displayed the crossed cannon insignia of the Rocket Troops and 
Artillery on their collar tabs. The Airborne Troops wore the light 
blue background color of the Air Forces, but with the insignia of 
the Airborne Troops on their collar tabs. An exception allowed the 
Administration Troops, Medical Troops, Military Procuracy, 
Quartermaster Troops, and Veterinary Troops to wear the color — 
magenta — prescribed for their branches regardless of assignment. 
The shoulder boards of enlisted personnel of the armed forces, ex- 
cept the Naval Forces, had large Cyrillic letters identifying the par- 
ticular component. For instance, the Cyrillic "CA" signified Soviet 
army and was used for the five services except the Naval Forces; 
other letters identified the Internal Troops of the Ministry of In- 
ternal Affairs, the Border Troops of the KGB, and other elements. 

Military Manpower 

According to the Soviet Constitution, all citizens had a "sacred" 
duty to defend the Soviet Union, to enhance its power and pres- 
tige, and to serve in its armed forces. The armed forces have been 
manned through conscription based on the provisions of the 1967 
Law on Universal Military Service. In 1989 about 75 percent of 
Soviet armed forces personnel were conscripts, and 5 percent were 
career noncommissioned officers (NCOs). The professional officer 
corps constituted 20 percent of the armed forces. An extensive 
reserve and mobilization system would augment regular forces in 
wartime. The Soviet Union also had a compulsory premilitary train- 
ing program for the country's youth. In the late 1980s, the num- 
ber of draft-age youths was stable, but fewer Russians and more 
non-Russians were being inducted into the armed forces. 

Premilitary Training 

Military and physical fitness training began at the age of ten in 
the Pioneers. Their activities emphasized military-patriotic indoc- 
trination, marching, and discipline. The Pioneers also guarded 
Soviet war monuments and participated in military sports games 
held every summer since 1967. In the games, children were divided 
into commanders, staff, and troops for maneuvers that simulated 
partisan warfare behind enemy lines. Members of the Komsomol, 
age fourteen and older, participated in more sophisticated military 
games. 



739 



Soviet Union: A 



Country Study 




740 



Armed Forces and Defense Organization 




Soviet Union: A Country Study 

When the terms of service for soldiers and sailors were reduced 
by one year in 1967, the government introduced general precon- 
scription military training. The institution of preconscription train- 
ing was designed to compensate for the reduced length of military 
service by providing basic military training prior to induction. 

DOSAAF organized and conducted premilitary training for 
young men and women between the ages of sixteen and eighteen. 
In principle, every secondary or vocational-technical school, fac- 
tory, and collective farm (see Glossary) in the Soviet Union had 
a DOSAAF organization. Millions of Soviet teenagers received 140 
hours of instruction in military regulations, small arms, grenade 
throwing, vehicle operation and maintenance, first aid, civil defense, 
and chemical defense. This training enabled them to learn advanced 
military skills more quickly after conscription. The Soviet press 
has claimed that each year 75 million people were involved in over 
300,000 DOSAAF programs nationwide. DOSAAF also had its 
own publishing house and monthly journal. 

Each union republic had a DOSAAF organization headed by 
a chairman and a central committee. DOSAAF worked closely with 
the ministries of education and the state committees for physical 
culture and sports in the union republics; it also maintained close 
relations with the deputy commanders for premilitary training in 
the military districts. The Premilitary Training Directorate within 
the Ministry of Defense supervised DOSAAF, yet the DOSAAF 
budget was separate from that of the Ministry of Defense. 

The best DOSAAF clubs were found in the Russian Republic, 
which included 51 percent of the population in the late 1980s and 
75 percent of the territory. The clubs offered specialist training, 
such as skiing, parachute jumping, scuba diving, motorcycle driv- 
ing, seamanship, flying, and radio and electronics maintenance, 
which were not available in the other republics. Yet many DOSAAF 
organizations throughout the country lacked qualified or full-time 
military instructors. Providing time and facilities for DOSAAF 
training was an added burden on schools and factories. In 1989 
the southern Soviet republics were often criticized in the military 
press for having poor premilitary training programs and sending 
unprepared recruits to the armed forces. One Western observer 
estimated that only half the Soviet troops actually received pre- 
scribed DOSAAF instruction prior to induction. Approximately 
one-third of all inductees, however, possessed a technical military 
specialty that they had learned in a DOSAAF club. 

Conscripts 

Under the 1967 Law on Universal Military Service, all male 
citizens must serve in the armed forces beginning at the age of 



742 



Armed Forces and Defense Organization 

eighteen. The conscription period for servicemen was two years 
except for sailors, which was three years. The 1967 law reduced 
the conscription period from three and four years, respectively, to 
provide more labor for the economy. A nationwide system of over 
4,000 military commissariats (voennye komissariaty — voenkomaty; sing., 
voenkomat — see Glossary) at the republic, oblast, raion, and city levels 
was responsible for conscription and veterans affairs. A voenkomat 
was accountable to the commander of the military district in which 
it was located. All males had to report to a voenkomat when they 
turned seventeen. The induction commission of the voenkomat gave 
potential recruits a physical examination and reviewed their school 
and DOSAAF training records. 

Each year over 2 million eighteen-year-olds have reported to 
voenkomat induction commissions. They have reported in the spring 
and the fall depending on whether their birthdays were in the first 
or second half of the year. Based on quotas assigned by the General 
Staffs Main Organization and Mobilization Directorate, the voenko- 
mat either assigned recruits to one of the armed services or granted 
deferments. Assignments were based on the physical attributes, edu- 
cation, skills, and political background of individual conscripts. The 
services that required technical abilities or high reliability, there- 
fore, received conscripts with the highest qualifications. For ex- 
ample, the Airborne Troops accepted only recruits that had been 
fully trained in parachute jumping by DOSAAF. By contrast, the 
Ground Forces and the Rear Services have had to take less qualified 
inductees. Overall, however, 90 percent of servicemen have had 
a secondary education. 

The voenkomaty granted about one-quarter of eighteen-year-old 
men deferments from service because of ill health or family hard- 
ship. Eighteen-year-olds were also exempted from service if they 
were enrolled in a higher education institution. They were required, 
however, to participate in the reserve officer training program of 
that institution. Those who had participated in such training pro- 
grams could serve as little as a year of active duty after gradua- 
tion. In 1982 education exemptions were restricted to those enrolled 
in a list of institutions approved by the Ministry of Defense. Young 
men not conscripted into the armed forces at eighteen remained 
liable to induction until age twenty- seven. The number of men 
deferred and later conscripted was probably small, however. Defer- 
ments were reportedly obtained from some induction commissions 
for a bribe of 1 ,000 rubles. The practice has been common enough 
that the Law on Universal Military Service mentioned punishment 
for granting illegal deferments. Soviet law did not provide for a 
conscientious objector status. In 1987, however, a pacifist group 



743 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



NGA 










Z«J 

<cc 

0LC3 

2g 


m 


CAPTAIN 






OC 










LU 
0. 










NGA 




DC 


OTA 
OYUZA 




cc 


<oc 

£° 

<o 




LU 

Q 


j« 






Mi 


1MAN! 


ADMIRAL F 
SOVETSKOGO 


IH 


O 
< 




o 




LU 


VTOI 




o 




LU 
LU 


kNGA 




1— oc 


OTA 






KAPITAN 
YEGO R/ 


WW 


EUTENAN 
DMMANDE 


1IRAL FL 


Ml 


ADMIRAL 


TRET 




-"O 


ADh 










h- 


i 




< 


$ 

<> 


HI 


EUTENAlv 


kDMIRAI 


Ml 


DE ADMIR 


_l 










> 






LU 


RAL 




< 


STARSHI' 
LEYTENAh 


m 


EUTENAN 
MIOR GRA 


VITSE-ADMI 


Ml 


AR ADMIF 




—1 ID 

—3 




RE 








IRAL 




DMIRAL 


MLADSHIY L 
LEYTENANT \ 


Hi 


ENSIGN 


fR-ADM 


Ml 


DDORE At 


llj 




KON 




COMMC 


SOVIET UNION 


NAVAL 
FORCES 


U.S. RANK TITLES 


SOVIET UNION 


NAVAL 
FORCES 


U.S. RANK TITLES 



LU 



i< 

W 

OCX 

<o 



></> 
<cc 
_l< 

(31- 



r 

H 



CO 

CCy) 

< 

I- 

(I) 



IO 

c/>cc 

to' 



ma 



oc5 
cc, 



U-FF. 



ccO 

O- 



i-cc 

LU LU 
0_O 



LU «< 

°o 



744 



Armed Forces and Defense Organization 

called Trust took advantage of Gorbachev's policy of glasnost' to 
protest compulsory service in the armed forces. 

Life in the Soviet Armed Forces 

On the day before beginning to serve in the armed forces, Soviet 
conscripts have traditionally attended an induction ceremony in 
which local CPSU officials and veterans gave patriotic speeches. 
The next day, they were transported directly to the military unit 
in which they would serve their two- or thre^-year tours of duty. 
Neither the conscripts nor their families knew its location before- 
hand. After one month of basic training that reviewed their premili- 
tary training, conscripts took the military oath in their regiments. 
In the oath, conscripts swore to guard state and military secrets, 
to master the craft of war, to protect state property, and to defend 
the homeland and government without sparing life or blood. 

Soviet troops lived under harsh conditions and strict discipline. 
The practice of stationing troops in isolated areas outside their home 
republics or regions and the system of internal passports kept the 
desertion rate relatively low; the location of Soviet troops far from 
their home region also enabled them to be deployed more easily 
against a rebellious local population. Troops had about an hour 
per day of "free" time, much of which was used for additional 
political training and mandatory sports activities. Leave and tem- 
porary passes were not issued as a matter of course. New conscripts 
could also expect to be harassed by soldiers in their second year 
of service. Such hazing occasionally spilled over into physical abuse 
and theft by senior soldiers against first-year troops. Conscripts 
were paid between 3 and 5 rubles per month, about enough to buy 
cigarettes. Low pay for conscripts conserved the Ministry of 
Defense's resources, but soldiers often became burdens for their 
families, who sent them money. 

The rate of alcoholism among military personnel was reported 
to be higher than in society as a whole, a fact that could be at- 
tributed to the boredom and isolation of life in the barracks. In 
addition, the expense and difficulty involved in obtaining alcohol 
often resulted in petty corruption and the sale of military supplies 
on the black market. Soldiers were confined to the stockade for 
minor infractions of this type. They were sent to penal battalions 
for more serious offenses, and time spent there did not count as 
time toward their discharge. 

Units trained six days every week in winter and summer cycles. 
The majority of parade drill, tactics, weapons, chemical defense, 
political, and physical training took place in garrison. The armed 
forces have strictly limited live firings of weapons, field exercises, 



745 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

days at sea, and flight time. The average serviceman might par- 
ticipate in several three-day regimental exercises and possibly one 
larger exercise in the military district in a two-year tour of duty. 
In addition to their military training, units have often been called 
on to help with harvesting. The semiannual turnover of conscripts, 
one-quarter of total conscript manpower, has meant that new in- 
ductees were constandy being assimilated into the armed services. 
This turnover and the two-year service term made it difficult to 
train and retain specialists to work on sophisticated weapons 
systems. 

Semiannual discharge orders from the minister of defense released 
troops completing their active duty and automatically enlisted them 
in the reserves. These troops also had the option of reenlisting as 
extended service soldiers or applying to become noncommissioned 
officers. Few did so, however. On returning home, released con- 
scripts had to register as reserves with the voenkomat and report to 
it changes in their residence, health, education, or family status 
until their reserve obligation ended at age fifty. 

Noncommissioned Officers 

The armed forces had a very low percentage of noncommissioned 
officers (NCOs) compared with other armies of the world and even 
fewer career NCOs. Soviet NCOs were essentially conscripts. At 
the time of induction, each voenkomat selected a few recruits to be- 
come NCOs. After training for from several weeks to six months, 
these new NCOs were assigned to units, but their authority over 
other conscripts was limited by their youth and inexperience. 
Moreover, because only 5 percent of Soviet military personnel were 
NCOs, junior commissioned officers had to perform many tasks 
assigned to sergeants in other countries' armies. The armed forces 
have made an effort to build a career NCO corps in order to re- 
tain needed skills, improve small unit leadership, and make a mili- 
tary career more attractive to conscripts. For example, in 1972 the 
Ministry of Defense instituted the NCO rank of warrant officer 
between the ranks of sergeant and junior officer. NCOs could also 
attend a six- to nine-month specialist course to become platoon com- 
manders and company technicians. 

National Minorities in the Armed Forces 

The military tried to give the impression that soldiers of differ- 
ent nationalities served together harmoniously, but the number of 
articles in the military press devoted to relations between ethnic 
groups itself indicated the persistence of nationality conflict within 
the armed forces. Rather than contributing to nation building, 



746 



Armed Forces and Defense Organization 

service in the armed forces reportedly was more likely to increase 
ethnic and linguistic consciousness. In the late 1980s, the Soviet 
Union's non-Slavic minority groups comprised one-quarter of the 
conscript pool. Western experts estimated that, as Slavic birthrates 
declined, by the year 2000 one-third of draft-age males would be 
non-Slavic. 

The armed forces, however, appeared to have mechanisms in 
place for maintaining control over national minorities in their ranks. 
The armed forces have been dominated by Slavs in general and 
Russians in particular. Russian has been the only language of com- 
mand, and Slavs constituted 80 percent of all combat personnel 
and 95 percent of the officer corps. Although more non-Slavs will 
have to be drafted in the future, a pervasive inability, or unwill- 
ingness, to read or speak Russian among non-Slavic, and particu- 
larly Central Asian, recruits has impeded their training and 
advancement in the military. Because the Russian language was 
not taught to conscripts in the armed forces, non-Slavs have been 
limited to assignments in nontechnical and noncombat positions. 
Most Central Asian conscripts were assigned to Construction and 
Troop Billeting and served their two years in construction battal- 
ions. They received little combat training. 

The military leadership viewed non- Slavs as potentially unreliable 
frontline troops. For example, Central Asian Muslim soldiers were 
deployed in Afghanistan during the early days of the war but had 
to be withdrawn because they sympathized with their coreligionists 
in that country. Moreover, non- Slavs were rarely assigned to the 
elite armed services. They were, however, recruited to serve with 
the Internal Troops in the Russian Republic because they could 
be counted on to suppress any disturbance in areas inhabited by 
ethnic Slavs. 

Women in the Armed Forces 

Under the Soviet Constitution, women had the same legal obli- 
gation as men for the defense of the Soviet Union and have been 
called on to discharge it. A women's battalion existed at the time 
of the Bolshevik Revolution and during the Civil War. Approxi- 
mately 800,000 women served in both combat and noncombat roles 
during World War II. According to the 1967 Law on Universal 
Military Service, women with medical or other special training must 
register for the draft, but they have not been inducted. Women 
between nineteen and forty may volunteer for active duty. In war- 
time women would be drafted for "auxiliary or special duty. ' ' The 
1967 law did not specify whether they would be used in combat. 
In the late 1980s, an estimated 10,000 to 30,000 women were 



747 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

serving in the armed forces in medical, communications, and ad- 
ministrative support positions. Women were not admitted to mili- 
tary education institutions, and few became officers. Many Western 
observers believe that the armed forces will have to rely more on 
women in the future as the number of available Slavic men declines. 

Officers 

The profession of officer in the armed forces has been presti- 
gious and well respected in the Soviet Union. The number of officers 
was very large, in part because the armed forces have contained 
a large number of conscripts and relatively few NCOs. The presence 
of a political officer, or zampolit, in every company or battery also 
has significantly raised the total number of officers. 

As of 1989, the Soviet Union had the world's largest officer train- 
ing system. At the secondary level, it had eight Suvorov military 
schools and the Nakhimov Naval Secondary School to prepare 
fifteen- and sixteen-year-old cadets, who were often sons of officers, 
for direct admission into higher military education institutions. 

In 1989 the Soviet Union had about 140 higher military schools, 
which trained officers for each armed service or combat arm. Young 
men between seventeen and twenty-one who had a secondary edu- 
cation could apply for admission into higher military schools. Ser- 
vicemen under the age of twenty- three could also apply. Admission 
was based on a competitive examination in Russian language and 
literature, Soviet history, physics, and mathematics, as well as a 
thorough review of an applicant's political and educational back- 
ground. 

Each higher military school had over 1,000 cadets and trained 
either command, engineering, or political officers for a particular 
combat arm (see table 55, Appendix A). The four- or five-year cur- 
riculum of command schools included about 60 percent military 
science, weapons, and tactics instruction and 40 percent general 
sciences education and political training. Cadets in political or en- 
gineering schools received correspondingly more political or tech- 
nical instruction. Upon graduation cadets received university 
diplomas and were commissioned as junior lieutenants. The higher 
military schools and reserve officer training programs in about 900 
civilian higher education institutions produced about 60,000 new 
officers for the armed forces each year. 

Junior officers remained in their assignments for long periods 
and were evaluated for promotion every four years based on their 
professional knowledge, performance, and moral-political capabil- 
ities (see Glossary). Some junior officer promotions were almost 
automatic because the time-in- grade requirement for advancement 



748 



Armed Forces and Defense Organization 

in rank was only two years. Officers' monthly pay ranged between 
150 rubles for lieutenants and 2,000 rubles for generals, which was 
considerably more than the salary of most managers in the civilian 
sector. 

Officers had greater opportunities to commit infractions of mili- 
tary law than ordinary servicemen, and their most common criminal 
offense was bribery. Officers inspecting units accepted bribes in 
return for overlooking training deficiencies, accidents, or discipli- 
nary breaches. The misuse of state property, and vehicles in par- 
ticular, was also widespread. According to the Law on Universal 
Military Service, however, officers could be discharged for com- 
mitting acts that disgraced their titles. 

Upon reaching the rank of senior lieutenant or captain, many 
officers began to prepare for competitive examinations to enter one 
of seventeen military academies. Candidates for admission were 
required to have held a regimental command position and received 
excellent ratings and to have been endorsed by the political direc- 
torate of their command or service. The two- or three-year pro- 
gram of a Soviet military academy was similar to command and 
staff training or war colleges in Western countries. Each armed 
service and combat arm had its own academy. The Frunze Mili- 
tary Academy, the most prestigious at its level, specialized in com- 
bined arms training but was attended predominantly by Ground 
Forces officers. Advanced study in military academies involved 
major military science research projects that were frequently pub- 
lished in books or articles. Military academies awarded diplomas 
equivalent to master's or doctoral degrees in the West. They also 
conducted correspondence courses leading to similar degrees. 

Graduation from a military academy was practically a require- 
ment for advancement to higher rank. In particular, graduation 
from the Voroshilov General Staff Academy, the highest-level 
academy, was a prerequisite for appointment to important Minis- 
try of Defense and General Staff positions. Among its graduates 
have been the ministers of defense of the Warsaw Pact countries. 
High rank has brought a salary of as much as 2,000 rubles monthly 
and other perquisites that come with being part of the elite. For 
example, many generals had summer homes reportedly built with 
government construction materials and military manpower. 

Officers were not under pressure to advance in rank, and higher 
ranking officers were not forced to retire early from the armed ser- 
vices. In theory, an officer could serve as a junior lieutenant until 
age forty. Mandatory retirement began at age forty and went up 
to age sixty for major generals. Above this rank, general officers 
could get extensions and were effectively exempt from mandatory 



749 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

retirement. In practice, many officers who resisted retirement were 
put to work in civil defense or DOSAAF organizations. High- 
ranking officers often moved into the Ministry of Defense's Main 
Inspectorate as senior inspectors or became the heads of higher mili- 
tary schools or academies. 

Reserves and Wartime Mobilization 

The Soviet Union had the world's most elaborate system of war- 
time mobilization, although it was not certain that the system would 
be as impressive in action as it was on paper. Soldiers retained a 
reserve obligation until age fifty. For officers, the reserve obliga- 
tion extended to sixty-five. Thus, Western specialists estimated that 
over 50 million males were reservists. Local voenkomaty maintained 
records of residences and other data that would be important in 
mobilizing the reserves. 

Reserves were divided into two categories of three classes based 
on age and the amount of refresher training they were supposed 
to receive after mobilization. Reserves were subject to periodic call- 
ups for active duty or training in the local garrison. The amount 
of reserve training actually conducted varied greatly. 

In 1 989 the Soviet Union had about 9 million servicemen who 
had been discharged from active duty in the preceding five years. 
Only 3 million of them would be needed to bring all active Ground 
Forces divisions to full strength in fewer than three days. Western 
analysts speculated that large numbers of additional divisions could 
be created within two to three months using civilian trucks and 
large stockpiles of older weapons and equipment. Such forces could 
be employed effectively against NATO's second echelons, as well 
as against less formidable opponents. 

Reserves, together with additional manpower and equipment 
mobilized in wartime, would substantially augment the consider- 
able strength of the peacetime Soviet military. Long favored by 
the political leadership, the military has received a large propor- 
tion of the human and material resources of the Soviet Union. 
Guided and controlled by the CPSU, the military's strategic leaders 
have organized, trained, and equipped the Soviet armed forces to 
capably fulfill their assigned missions. 

* * * 

The single most complete work on the Soviet armed forces is 
Harriet F. Scott and William F. Scott's The Armed Forces of the USSR. 
The Department of Defense's Soviet Military Power, the eighth edi- 
tion of which was published in 1989, contains information about 



750 



Armed Forces and Defense Organization 



Soviet forces that is not available to the public elsewhere. The Military 
Balance, issued annually by the International Institute for Strategic 
Studies, is a consistentiy accurate and independent source of in- 
formation on the size of the Soviet defense effort. Coverage of cur- 
rent developments in Soviet weapons, tactics, strategy, and military 
leadership can be found in the regular columns and feature arti- 
cles of many defense-oriented journals. The Air University Library 
Index to Military Periodicals, edited by Emily J. Adams, is an excel- 
lent resource for locating these articles. The Soviet Armed Forces Review 
Annual, edited by David R. Jones, provides coverage of changes 
in the Soviet military from year to year. Richard A. Gabriel and 
Ellen Jones have written extensively on the troops behind Soviet 
weapons and equipment. Inside the Soviet Army, by a Soviet officer 
who defected to the West and writes under the pseudonym Viktor 
Suvorov, also contains revealing insights into the operation of and 
life in the armed forces. (For further information and complete 
citations, see Bibliography.) 



751 



Chapter 19. Internal Security 



Symbols of internal security: the crest of the Committee for State 
Security (KGB), border guards near a watchtower, and a member 
of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) 



IN THE LATE 1980s, the Soviet Union continued to place great 
emphasis on ensuring security and internal order. Because it was 
governed by a monopolistic party, whose leaders were not demo- 
cratically elected, the Soviet system had no legitimacy based on 
popular support and therefore protected itself from internal and 
external threats by means of a strong security system. The system 
included the regular police, judicial bodies, prosecuting organs, 
and the security police, as well as an external security and foreign 
intelligence apparatus. Even in the era of perestroika (see Glossary) 
and glasnost' (see Glossary) ushered in by General Secretary 
Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the organs of internal security still had a 
key role to play, despite the party leadership's apparent tolerance 
of criticism of the political system. 

The Soviet security, or political, police had a long history, dat- 
ing back to the prerevolutionary, tsarist period. Although the tsarist 
political police was ruthless and unscrupulous, the police organs 
established by Vladimir I. Lenin and the Bolsheviks (see Glossary) 
in 1917, known as the Vecheka (see Glossary), far surpassed their 
predecessors in terms of terror and violence. The Bolsheviks al- 
lowed the Vecheka almost unrestricted powers to persecute those 
who were perceived as "class enemies." This set the stage for the 
development of the brutal Stalinist police state, in which millions 
of innocent victims perished at the hands of the political police, 
controlled by Joseph V. Stalin. 

After Stalin died, Nikita S. Khrushchev initiated legal reforms 
and reorganized the police apparatus. The terror ended abruptly, 
and the political police were brought under the control of the Com- 
munist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). The Committee for State 
Security (Komitet gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti — KGB), estab- 
lished in March 1954, was tasked with security functions, and the 
Ministry of Internal Affairs (Ministerstvo vnutrennykh del — MVD) 
was charged with combating ordinary crime and maintaining the 
extensive network of labor camps. A new legal code was established 
to replace the Stalinist laws, and both the security police and the 
regular police were subjected to procedural norms and regulations 
in carrying out their functions. Nevertheless, the party leadership 
did not eliminate all the legal loopholes and allowed the KGB to 
circumvent the law when combating political dissent. The KGB 
also played an important role in implementing the anticorruption 
campaign, which resulted in the ouster of many state and party 



755 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

officials after General Secretary Leonid I. Brezhnev died. Among 
its other tasks were guarding the leadership and important govern- 
ment buildings; protecting Soviet state borders; and carrying out 
intelligence, counterintelligence, and active measures (see Glos- 
sary) abroad. 

The MVD was restricted to combating ordinary crime and, un- 
like the KGB, was subjected to constant criticism in the Soviet press, 
which attacked its inefficiency and corruption. In addition to the 
MVD, the Procuracy (Prokuratura) and the Ministry of Justice 
played important roles in implementing the laws and administer- 
ing justice. The Ministry of Defense's Main Military Procuracy, 
along with the system of military tribunals, handled crimes within 
the armed forces. 

Both the KGB and the MVD played important roles in the suc- 
cession crises that followed Brezhnev's death. The KGB, however, 
was more politically significant than the MVD and, after the early 
1970s, had an increasing impact on Soviet domestic and foreign 
policy making. To reinforce their coercive role, the KGB and the 
MVD had special troops at their disposal, including the Border 
Troops, the Security Troops, and the Internal Troops. 

Predecessors of the Committee for State Security and 
the Ministry of Internal Affairs 

The KGB and the MVD had numerous predecessor organiza- 
tions, dating back to the tsarist period. These organizations con- 
tributed significantly to the historical traditions of the modern Soviet 
police, which in several ways resembled those of its forerunners. 

The Tsarist Period 

The 1980s Soviet police system cannot be properly understood 
without considering the evolution of the tsarist police, particularly 
as it related to Russia's political culture and governmental institu- 
tions. By the middle of the nineteenth century, Russia was, by all 
accounts, a "police state," not in the modern sense of the term, 
which connotes all the evils of Nazi Germany and Stalinism, but 
in the more traditional sense as it applied to certain European states 
in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, e.g., France and 
Prussia. These states, which incorporated secret political police, 
spying, and encroachments on individual rights with both pater- 
nalism and enlightenment, were motivated by a desire to reform 
and modernize. 

Russia's monarchical police state was similar to those in western 
Europe except that it lagged far behind in its political evolution 
and was much less efficient. The foundations of the tsarist police 



756 



Internal Security 



state were established in 1826, when Tsar Nicholas I formed the 
so-called Third Section, a political police whose purpose was to pro- 
tect the state from internal subversion. The staff of the Third Sec- 
tion was small, numbering only forty full-time employees, who were 
burdened with information- gathering and welfare functions that 
extended well beyond the realm of political surveillance. As a result, 
its role was vague and poorly defined, and its efforts to combat 
political dissent, on the whole, were ineffective. 

In 1880, as part of an effort to improve the effectiveness of the 
political police, the much-discredited Third Section was abolished 
and replaced by the central State Police Department under the 
Ministry of the Interior. Its chief responsibility was dealing with 
political crimes, and, although its staff consisted of only 161 full- 
time employees, it had at its disposal the Corps of Gendarmes, num- 
bering several thousand, and a large contingent of informers. In 
addition, the notorious " security sections" were established in 
several Russian cities following the assassination of Alexander II 
in 1881 . Despite the fact that its operations were strengthened, the 
political police was not successful in stemming the tide of the revolu- 
tionary movement, which helped to bring down the Russian mon- 
archy in 1917. Police operations were hampered by the low quality 
of personnel and grave deficiencies in training. One of the greatest 
impediments to an effective political police was the general reluc- 
tance on the part of the Russian state to use violence against polit- 
ical dissenters. Herein lies one of the crucial differences between 
the monarchical police state of tsarist Russia and the Soviet regime, 
which from the outset used violence to preserve its rule and gradu- 
ally extended the violence to affect broad segments of the population. 

Soviet Predecessor Organizations, 1917-54 

The Bolshevik regime created a police system that proved to be 
far more effective than the tsarist version. It swept away the tsarist 
police, so despised by Russians of all political persuasions, along 
with other tsarist institutions, and replaced it with a political police 
of considerably greater dimensions, both in the scope of its authority 
and in the severity of its methods. However lofty their initial goals 
were, the Bolsheviks forcibly imposed their rule on the people. They 
constituted a dictatorship of a minority that had to establish a power- 
ful political police apparatus to preserve its domination. 

The first Soviet political police, created in December 1917, was 
the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Coun- 
terrevolution and Sabotage (Vserossiiskaia chrezvychainaia komis- 
siia po bor'be s kontrrevoliutsiei i sabotazhem — VChK; also known 
as the Vecheka or the Cheka). The Vecheka was very much an 



757 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

ad hoc organization whose powers gradually grew in response to 
various emergencies and threats to Soviet rule (see table 56, 
Appendix A). No formal legislation establishing the Vecheka was 
ever enacted. It was to serve as an organ of preliminary investiga- 
tion, but the crimes it was to uncover were not defined, and the 
procedures for handling cases were not set forth. This situation was 
the result of the extralegal character of the Vecheka, which was 
conceived not as a permanent state institution but as a temporary 
organ for waging war against " class enemies." Given its militant 
role and supralegal status, it is not surprising that the Vecheka, 
which was headed by Feliks E. Dzerzhinskii, acquired powers of 
summary justice as the threat of counterrevolution and foreign 
intervention grew. After an attempt was made on Lenin's life in 
August 1918, the Vecheka unleashed its violence on a wide scale, 
the so-called Red Terror, which continued until 1920 and caused 
thousands to lose their lives. 

The end of the Civil War (1918-21), the demobilization of the 
Red Army, and the introduction of the New Economic Policy (NEP) 
in 1921 brought about a changed atmosphere that seemed incom- 
patible with a terrorist political police. Lenin himself spoke of the 
need for a reform of the political police, and in early 1922 the Veche- 
ka was abolished and its functions transferred to the State Politi- 
cal Directorate (Gosudarstvennoe politicheskoe upravlenie — GPU). 
When the Soviet Union was formed in December 1922, the GPU 
was raised to the level of a federal agency, designated the Unified 
State Political Directorate (Ob"edinennoe gosudarstvennoe poli- 
ticheskoe upravlenie — OGPU), and attached to the Council of Peo- 
ple's Commissars. On paper it appeared that the powers of the 
political police had been reduced significantly. Indeed, police opera- 
tions during the NEP period were considerably less violent, and 
the staff and budget of the political police were reduced. Initially, 
the OGPU was subject to definite procedural requirements regard- 
ing arrests and was not given the powers of summary justice that 
its predecessor had. But the legal constraints on the OGPU were 
gradually removed, and its authority grew throughout the 1920s. 
The OGPU was drawn into the intraparty struggles that ensued 
between Stalin and his opponents and was also enlisted in the drive 
to collectivize the peasantry by force, beginning in late 1929, an 
operation that resulted in the death of at least 5 million people. 

In July 1934, the OGPU was transformed into the Main Direc- 
torate for State Security (Glavnoe upravlenie gosudarstvennoi 
bezopasnosti — GUGB) and integrated into the People's Commis- 
sariat of Internal Affairs (Narodnyi komissariat vnutrennykh del — 
NKVD), which had been given all-union (see Glossary) status 



758 



Internal Security 



earlier that year. The functions of the security police and those of 
the internal affairs apparatus, which controlled the regular police 
and the militia, were thus united in one agency. The NKVD was 
a powerful organization. In addition to controlling the security 
police and the regular police, it was in charge of border and inter- 
nal troops, fire brigades, convoy troops, and, after 1934, the en- 
tire penal system, including regular prisons and forced labor camps, 
or the Gulag (see Glossary). During the period from 1934 to 1940, 
the NKVD took charge of numerous economic enterprises (see Glos- 
sary) that employed forced labor, such as gold mining, major con- 
struction projects, and other industrial activity. In addition, the 
Special Board, attached to the NKVD, operated outside the legal 
codes and was empowered to impose on persons deemed ' ' socially 
dangerous" sentences of exile, deportation, or confinement in labor 
camps. The Special Board soon became one of the chief instru- 
ments of Stalin's purges. 

Stalin's domination over the party was not absolute at this time, 
however. Dissatisfaction with his policies continued to be manifested 
by some party members, and elements existed within the leader- 
ship that might have opposed any attempt to use police terror against 
the party. Among Stalin's potential challengers was Sergei Kirov, 
chief of the Leningrad party apparatus. Conveniently for Stalin, 
Kirov was assassinated by a disgruntled ex-party member in De- 
cember 1934. This provided Stalin with the pretext for launching 
an assault against the party. Although Stalin proceeded cautiously, 
the turning point had been reached, and the terror machinery was 
in place. From 1936 to 1938, the NKVD arrested and executed 
millions of party members, government officials, and ordinary 
citizens. The military also came under assault. Much of the officer 
corps was wiped out in 1937-38, leaving the country ill prepared 
for World War II. The era in which the NKVD, with Stalin's 
aproval, terrorized Soviet citizens became known in the West as 
the Great Terror (see Glossary). 

The war years brought further opportunities for the political 
police, under the control of Lavrenty Beria, to expand its author- 
ity. The NKVD assumed a number of additional economic func- 
tions that made use of the expanding labor camp population. The 
NKVD also broadened its presence in the Red Army, where it con- 
ducted extensive surveillance of the troops. Toward the end of the 
war, the political police moved into areas formerly under German 
occupation to arrest those suspected of sympathy for the Nazis. 
They also suppressed nationalist movements in the Estonian, Lat- 
vian, Lithuanian, and western Ukrainian republics. 



759 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Beria himself steadily gained power and authority during this 
period. In early 1946, when he was made a full member of the Polit- 
buro and a deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers (the new 
name for the Council of People's Commissars), he relinquished 
his NKVD post, but he apparently retained some control over the 
police through his proteges in that organization. In March 1953, 
following Stalin's death, Beria became chief of the MVD, which 
amalgamated the regular police and the security police into one 
organization. Some three months later, he was viewed as a threat 
to the leadership and was arrested by his Kremlin colleagues, in- 
cluding Khrushchev. 

The ' 'Beria affair" and the shake-up in the Kremlin that fol- 
lowed his arrest had far-reaching consequences for the role of the 
police in Soviet society. The party leadership not only arrested and 
later executed Beria and several of his allies in the MVD but also 
took measures to place the political police under its firm control. 
Thereafter, violence was no longer to be used as a means of setding 
conflicts within the leadership, and widespread terror was not em- 
ployed against the population. 

The Security Apparatus and Kremlin Politics 

The Khrushchev period was important for the development of 
the internal security apparatus. Legal reforms, personnel changes, 
and the denunciation of Stalin had a marked effect on the position 
of the police and the legal organs. As the successor to Khrushchev, 
Brezhnev did much to reverse the tide of reforms, but later, under 
Gorbachev, reforms progressed again. The reforms brought op- 
position to Gorbachev from the police apparatus because the 
changes curtailed police powers. 

Khrushchev Period 

One of the first reforms instituted by the post- Stalin leadership 
under Khrushchev was a reorganization of the police apparatus. 
On March 13, 1954 a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet 
established the KGB, attached to the Council of Ministers. The 
establishment of a state security apparatus separate from that of 
the regular police was designed to diminish the formidable powers 
that the police had wielded when its activities were concentrated 
in one organization. Thereafter, the functions of ensuring politi- 
cal security would be ascribed to a special police agency, whose 
powers were substantially less than they had been under Stalin. 

The party leadership also instituted significant legal reforms to 
protect citizens from police persecution. On May 24, 1955, a new 
statute on procurator (see Glossary) supervision was enacted by 



760 



Internal Security 



the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. This statute provided 
procedural guarantees of procuratorial power to protest illegalities 
committed by state agencies and to make proposals for eliminat- 
ing these illegalities. Another reform that restricted the powers of 
the political police and protected citizens from police persecution 
was the enactment in December 1958 of the Fundamental Princi- 
ples of Criminal Procedure, which were incorporated into the 1960 
Russian Republic's Code of Criminal Procedure and were still in 
effect in 1989, although they had been amended several times. 

The new codes, which were established according to the Rus- 
sian Republic model in the other republics as well, subjected the 
KGB to the same procedural rules to which other investigative agen- 
cies were subject and specified precisely the types of crimes the KGB 
was empowered to investigate. A new law on state crimes, enacted 
on December 25, 1958, and incorporated into the 1960 Code of 
Criminal Procedure of the Russian Republic, narrowed the range 
of political crimes that were embodied in the Stalinist codes and 
made criminal sanctions less severe. 

Khrushchev's policy of de-Stalinization also had significance for 
the role of the post-Stalin political police. His famous "secret 
speech," delivered at the Twentieth Party Congress in February 
1956, called attention to the crimes committed by the police under 
Stalin. This inevitably weakened the prestige of the KGB and 
demoralized its cadres (see Glossary), many of whom had partici- 
pated actively in the purges. 

These police and legal reforms were diminished somewhat by 
the appointment in 1954 of two long-time police officials, Ivan Serov 
and Sergei Kruglov, to head the KGB and the MVD, respectively. 
Serov 's past was heavily tainted by his participation in the Stalinist 
police repression, as was that of Kruglov. Both, however, had lent 
their support to Khrushchev when he made his move against Beria, 
and apparently they had to be rewarded. Although Khrushchev 
and the party leadership wanted to demonstrate that they were 
"cleansing the ranks" of the police by purging many officials, they 
retained others who were loyal and experienced. 

In December 1958, Serov was removed from his post as KGB 
chief and replaced by Aleksandr Shelepin, a former Komsomol (see 
Glossary) official. With his higher education in humanities and his 
untainted record, Shelepin did much to raise the stature of the KGB 
and to bring renewed efficiency and legitimacy to it. By the late 
1950s, efforts were under way to improve the public image of the 
KGB by portraying its officials in a favorable light in the media 
and by publishing works on the history of the Soviet political police. 



761 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

In addition, changes in the legal codes in 1961 broadened the KGB's 
investigative powers. 

Shelepin himself may have been largely responsible for the cam- 
paign to rehabilitate the security police. Although he left his post 
as head of the KGB in December 1961, he continued to oversee 
the police in his capacity as Central Committee secretary, and his 
successor, Vladimir Semichastnyi, was a close ally. Both Shelepin 
and Semichastnyi appeared to have joined the ranks of opposition 
to Khrushchev sometime before his ouster in October 1964 and 
were actively involved in the plot to overthrow the party leader. 
De-Stalinization, legal reforms, and various other measures pro- 
moted by Khrushchev to curtail the activities of the security police 
had no doubt created resentment within its ranks and aroused the 
displeasure of leading KGB officials. 

After Khrushchev 

Brezhnev evidently had learned a lesson from Khrushchev's ex- 
perience and went out of his way to raise the status of the police 
and clamp down on political dissent. The KGB's investigative 
powers were extended in 1965 to include certain categories of eco- 
nomic crime, and it continued to be accorded favorable publicity 
in the Soviet press. Its growing prestige and authority accom- 
modated those neoconservative trends that manifested themselves 
during the late 1960s and 1970s: curbs on cultural freedom, a crack- 
down on dissent, and a partial rehabilitation of Stalin. 

Brezhnev and his party colleagues became worried about the am- 
bitions of Shelepin, however, and decided to put an end to his in- 
fluence over the security police. In May 1967, Semichastnyi was 
removed as KGB chief, and by November of that year Shelepin 
was out of the Central Committee Secretariat. The new KGB chair- 
man was lurii I. Andropov, a Central Committee secretary who 
had served as ambassador to Hungary and later as head of the Liai- 
son with Communist and Workers' Parties of Socialist Countries 
Department of the Central Committee. He was apparently a neu- 
tral figure politically, agreed upon by all members of the collec- 
tive leadership; Brezhnev, however, managed to bring in several 
of his own proteges to serve directly below Andropov. The most 
important of these was a KGB official named Semen Tsvigun, re- 
portedly Brezhnev's brother-in-law, who was made first deputy KGB 
chairman in December 1967. Viktor M. Chebrikov was another offi- 
cial with links to Brezhnev who was brought to Moscow to serve 
in the KGB. The presence of his allies in the KGB leadership was 
a source of strength for Brezhnev, and he made certain that their 
careers prospered. In addition to encouraging favorable publicity 



762 



Internal Security 



for the KGB, Brezhnev was careful to ensure that employees of 
the KGB were well paid and enjoyed significant privileges and per- 
quisites. 

Brezhnev may have underestimated the political prowess of 
Andropov, however. Andropov benefited from the increased powers 
and prestige that the KGB gained under the Brezhnev leadership 
and became a powerful political leader in his own right. As Brezh- 
nev's death became imminent in 1982, Andropov began contend- 
ing for the top party post. His success in reaching his goal in 
November 1982 was due partly to his attack, using KGB files as 
weapons, on the Brezhnevites for their involvement in corruption. 
Not surprisingly, Andropov's short tenure as general secretary 
(November 1982-February 1984) was marked by a stronger KGB 
role. Even Andropov's illness and death did not result in a decline 
for the KGB. On the contrary, the extended period of political up- 
heaval in the Kremlin following his death seemed to increase the 
KGB's influence. Its officials received prominent coverage in the 
press, and KGB representation on party and state leadership bodies 
grew. 

Gorbachev Era 

After gaining the post of general secretary in March 1985, Gor- 
bachev moved with unprecedented speed to implement personnel 
changes in the party and government. His success in getting rid 
of so many potential political opponents in such a short time sur- 
prised Western Soviet experts, particularly because Gorbachev did 
not have a substantial power base or patronage network of his own 
when he took office. Gorbachev apparendy relied on the same bases 
of support that Andropov had used in his ascent to the top, which 
included the KGB. According to Western experts, Gorbachev ap- 
pealed to the KGB for help in purging the Brezhnev old guard. 
The main vehicle used by Gorbachev in carrying out these purges 
was the anticorruption campaign. By the late summer of 1985, 
hardly a day passed without a report in the press on cases of bribery, 
embezzlement, or other forms of economic crime. In addition to 
high-level party and state officials, MVD and Procuracy employees 
came under fire for their failure to uncover crimes. Even MVD 
chief Vitalii Fedorchuk fell victim to Gorbachev, losing his post 
in early 1986. Fedorchuk' s replacement, Aleksandr Vlasov, was 
a former party apparatchik (see Glossary) with no experience in 
law enforcement. 

Although the regular law enforcement agencies were sub- 
jected to sharp attacks for their failure to combat crime, the KGB 
remained unscathed, despite the fact that it was empowered by law 



763 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



to investigate certain types of economic crime. There was some 
turnover in key KGB posts, but these changes were not nearly as 
widespread as were the changes in the CPSU apparatus and in other 
state agencies. 

Numerous signs pointed to the fact that the Gorbachev leader- 
ship was cultivating good relations with the KGB by maintaining 
its high prestige and political status. KGB chairman Chebrikov 
was promoted to full membership in the Politburo just a month 
after Gorbachev came to power. He also figured prominently 
in the Soviet media. At the Twenty- Seventh Party Congress in 
February- March 1986, for example, he delivered a speech that was 
an unprecedented assertion of the power and authority of the KGB. 

Although Gorbachev continued to rely on the KGB in his drive 
to purge the party and state apparatus of corrupt officials, toward 
the end of 1986 signs indicated that his relations with this organi- 
zation were becoming strained. The KGB cannot have been pleased 
about the reformist polices promoted by Gorbachev, in particular 
openness in the media and liberalization of cultural norms. Calls 
for reform of the judicial and legal systems, voiced with increasing 
frequency in the autumn of 1986, signified that the Gorbachev 
leadership was attempting to curtail arbitrary KGB actions against 
citizens. This attempt became even more apparent in January 1987, 
when Chebrikov acknowledged, on the front page of Pravda, that 
employees of the KGB had committed illegalities. Such an ac- 
knowledgment of KGB abuses was unprecedented. Even during 
the Khrushchev era, when the crimes of Stalin's security police were 
exposed, the KGB was never criticized in the press. Observers 
speculated that, having depended initially on KGB support to purge 
the Brezhnevites, Gorbachev decided by early 1987 that he was 
strong enough to embark on reforms that might antagonize this 
institution. 

It was not long, however, before signs of opposition to Gor- 
bachev's policies arose, and a "conservative backlash" occurred. 
Although the opposition appears to have been led by disgruntled 
party leaders such as Egor K. Ligachev, the second-ranking member 
of the Politburo, the KGB probably joined forces with these con- 
servatives. Chebrikov' s comments, in particular his strident speech 
delivered in September 1987, made it clear that the KGB would 
not allow the democratic reforms to go too far: "There must be 
a clear awareness that the restructuring is taking place in our state 
and society under the leadership of the Communist Party, within 
the framework of socialism and in the interests of socialism. This 
revolutionary process will be reliably protected against any sub- 
versive intrigues." The subsequent ouster of a leading proponent 



764 



Internal Security 



of Gorbachev's reforms, Moscow party chief Boris N. Yeltsin, was 
an indication of the strength of the opposition to Gorbachev. 

Although he made some strategic retreats in early 1988, Gor- 
bachev continued to pursue his policy of perestroika, and exposures 
of illegal KGB activities continued. Even more threatening for the 
KGB were unprecedented revelations about security police terror 
under Stalin. Although the role of the police in the purges had been 
discussed since the Khrushchev era, glasnosV resulted in a much 
more devastating critique of the role of the police during this period. 
Ethnic unrest of various nationalities, together with increasingly 
bold political demands by the Soviet intelligentsia, also presented 
the KGB with significant challenges. In a speech delivered in mid- 
April, Chebrikov expressed concern that things were going too far 
and that some individuals were "unleashing a wide-ranging arsenal 
of methods of social demagoguery and substituting bourgeois liber- 
alism for the essence of the concept of socialist democracy." Sub- 
sequently, in October 1988 Chebrikov lost his position as chief of 
the KGB and was replaced by Vladimir A. Kriuchkov. 

Organization of the Committee for State Security 

The basic organizational structure of the KGB was created in 
1954, when the reorganization of the police apparatus was carried 
out. In the late 1980s, the KGB remained a highly centralized in- 
stitution with controls implemented by the Politburo through the 
KGB headquarters in Moscow. 

Structure 

The KGB was originally designated as a "state committee at- 
tached to the Council of Ministers." On July 5, 1978, a new law 
on the Council of Ministers changed the status of the KGB, along 
with that of several other state committees, so that its chairman 
was a member of the Council of Ministers by law. According to 
the 1977 Soviet Constitution, the Council of Ministers "coordinates 
and directs" the work of the ministries and state committees, in- 
cluding the KGB. In practice, however, the KGB had more au- 
tonomy than most other government bodies and operated with a 
large degree of independence from the Council of Ministers. The 
situation was similar with the Supreme Soviet, which had formal 
authority over the Council of Ministers and its agencies. In 1989 
the actual powers of the Supreme Soviet, however, gave it little 
if any power over KGB operations. 

The KGB was a union-republic state committee, controlling cor- 
responding state committees of the same name in the fourteen non- 
Russian republics. (All-union ministries and state committees, by 



765 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

contrast, did not have corresponding branches in the republics but 
executed their functions direcdy through Moscow.) Below the 
republic level, there existed KGB administrations (upravleniia) in 
the kraia (see Glossary) and oblasts (see Glossary). In the Russian 
Republic, however, there was no republic-level KGB. Oblast KGB 
administrations in the Russian Republic were subordinated direcdy 
to the central KGB offices in Moscow. At the lower levels, autono- 
mous okruga (see Glossary), cities, and raiony (see Glossary) had 
KGB departments or sections. 

The KGB also had a broad network of special departments in 
all major government institutions, enterprises, and factories. They 
generally consisted of one or more KGB representatives, whose 
purpose was to ensure the observance of security regulations and 
to monitor political sentiments among employees. The special 
departments recruited informers to help them in their tasks. A 
separate and very extensive network of special departments existed 
within the armed forces and defense-related institutions. 

Although a union-republic agency, the KGB was highly central- 
ized and was controlled rigidly from the top. The KGB central staff 
kept a close watch over the operations of its branches, leaving the 
latter minimal autonomous authority over policy or cadre selec- 
tion. Moreover, local government organs had little involvement 
in local KGB activities. Indeed, the high degree of centralization 
in the KGB was reflected in the fact that regional KGB branches 
were not subordinated to the local Soviets (see Glossary), but only 
to the KGB hierarchy. Thus, they differed from local branches of 
most union- republic ministerial agencies, such as the MVD, which 
were subject to dual subordination. 

The KGB was directed by a chairman — who was formally ap- 
pointed by the Supreme Soviet but actually was selected by the 
Politburo — one or two first deputy chairmen, and several (usually 
four to six) deputy chairmen. Key decisions were made by the KGB 
Collegium, which was a collective leadership body composed of 
the chairman, deputy chairmen, chiefs of certain KGB directorates, 
and one or two chairmen of republic KGB organizations. 

Functions and Internal Organization 

As a state committee with ministerial status, the KGB operated 
on the basis of a statute (polozhenie), confirmed by the Council of 
Ministers, that set forth in legal terms the KGB's powers and duties. 
Unlike the majority of statutes governing ministerial agencies, the 
KGB's statute was not published. Nevertheless, Soviet textbooks 
on administrative law offered useful statements about the KGB's 
role and functions. The KGB's tasks were generally defined in 



766 



Internal Security 



official Soviet publications as encompassing four areas: the strug- 
gle against foreign spies and agents, the exposure and investiga- 
tion of political and economic crimes by citizens, the protection 
of state borders, and the protection of state secrets. In addition, 
the KGB was charged with a wide range of preventive tasks, which 
were designed to eliminate the causes of both political and ordi- 
nary crimes. In other words, the KGB was tasked with ferreting 
out potential threats to the state and preventing the development 
of unorthodox political and social attitudes among the population. 

Official Soviet sources did not discuss the internal structure of 
the KGB in detail. Nevertheless, some information on KGB or- 
ganization and functions has been revealed by Soviet defectors and 
other sources. In 1988 the KGB had five chief directorates and three 
known (possibly another) directorates that were smaller in size and 
scope than the chief directorates, as well as various other adminis- 
trative and technical support departments (see fig. 37). Western 
estimates of KGB manpower past ranged from 490,000 in 1973 
to 700,000 in 1986. 

The First Chief Directorate was responsible for all foreign oper- 
ations and intelligence- gathering activities. It was divided into both 
functional services — training and management of covert agents, 
intelligence analysis, and collection of political, scientific, and tech- 
nological intelligence — and geographic departments for various 
areas of the world. 

The Second Chief Directorate was responsible for internal po- 
litical control of Soviet citizens and foreigners residing within the 
Soviet Union, including both diplomats and tourists. The Fifth 
Chief Directorate also dealt with internal security. Created in the 
late 1960s to combat political dissent, it took up some of the tasks 
previously handled by the Second Chief Directorate. The Fifth Chief 
Directorate had special operational departments for religious dis- 
sent, national minorities, the intelligentsia and the artistic com- 
munity, and censorship of literature. The Seventh Directorate 
handled surveillance, providing personnel and technical equipment 
to follow and monitor the activities of both foreigners and suspect 
Soviet citizens. Much of this work was centered in the Moscow 
and Leningrad areas, where tourists, diplomats, foreign students, 
and members of the Soviet intelligentsia were concentrated. The 
Eighth Chief Directorate was responsible for the highly sensitive 
area of communications. This directorate provided technical sys- 
tems, including cipher systems, for other KGB departments and 
government agencies and also monitored and deciphered foreign 
communications . 



767 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



CO 

a si 

o o 

1 LU d 

cd gg g 

o 



Ot 
u- cr 

LU => 
LU O 
I- LU 

O oo 



t LU 



UJ 

I- I- 
o z 

LU 3 
5 O 
Q O 



§£< 

LU — 

wQlu 
z 



H LU lu 

^ Z 2 

O LU LU 
5<20 



U_ — ± 
LU Z DC 

I O £ 
h- EC 3 

DL LL M 



DC 2 

O LU 
LU > 
DCO 

5^ 



X Q 

I CO 

to 




ii 

Z Q- 



12 

T Cl 
O 3 
LU CO 



CO 




LU 
> 




X 




o 








< 





O 2 
Z h- 
< DC 

z < 

LI Si 



z 

z£ 







< 












cr 








CO 

1 





?2 



768 



Internal Security 



The KGB had at least three additional directorates: the Third 
Chief Directorate, which dealt with military counterintelligence and 
political surveillance of the Soviet armed forces; the Border Troops 
Directorate, which protected Soviet land and sea borders; and the 
Ninth Directorate, which guarded the Kremlin and key offices of 
the CPSU. 

In addition to the various directorates and a special network of 
training and education establishments, the KGB had a personnel 
department, a secretariat, a technical support staff, a finance depart- 
ment, an archives, an administration department, and a party com- 
mittee. Most of these bodies had counterparts within the different 
directorates. Party committees, which existed in every Soviet or- 
ganization, handled political indoctrination of personnel. Heads 
of party committees arranged regular meetings to discuss party mat- 
ters and served as liaisons between the party and the KGB at vari- 
ous levels, although party membership was probably universal 
among KGB employees. At the republic level, KGB organization 
was probably similar to that of the central KGB, although repub- 
lic KGBs did not supervise units of the Border Troops, which were 
administered centrally. Nor did they include functions of the Third 
Chief Directorate, which was organized primarily along military 
service lines or by military district. In addition, functions such as 
communications and foreign espionage may have been administered 
only in Moscow. 

Party Control 

Although the security police was always a government rather 
than a party institution, the party considered this agency to be its 
own vital arm and sought to maintain the closest supervision and 
control over its activities. The KGB was nominally subordinate 
to the Council of Ministers. But the CPSU, not the government, 
exercised control and direction. Aside from the Politburo, which 
probably issued general policy directives, another vehicle for such 
party control was, according to Western specialists, the State and 
Legal Department of the Central Committee Secretariat (see 
Secretariat, ch. 7). This department supervised all government 
agencies concerned with legal affairs, security, and defense, includ- 
ing the Ministry of Defense. It implemented party control by ap- 
proving personnel appointments and exercising general oversight 
to ensure that these agencies were following party directives. From 
1968 to 1988, the chief of this department, which probably had 
a staff of fifty to sixty employees, was Nikolai Savinkin. From the 
available evidence, it appears that the department did not involve 
itself as deeply in KGB affairs as it did in the activities of other 



769 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

state agencies, such as the MVD. Given the sensitive nature of 
KGB functions, the party leadership may have been reluctant to 
allocate to the State and Legal Department the most important de- 
cisions about KGB personnel and policy. Rather, the Central Com- 
mittee secretaries charged with oversight responsibilities for the State 
and Legal Department probably made the key decisions. Such a 
portfolio was an important source of political power for a Central 
Committee secretary and was therefore a highly coveted responsi- 
bility. In January 1987, Anatolii I. Luk'ianov was brought into 
the Secretariat to supervise the State and Legal Department. He 
was, however, only a junior secretary, so Gorbachev or another 
senior secretary may have had the ultimate responsibility. Luk'i- 
anov, an apparent ally of Gorbachev, had attended Moscow Univer- 
sity's Law Faculty when Gorbachev was there in the early 1950s. 

Personnel 

Party personnel policy toward the KGB was designed not only 
to ensure that the overall security needs of the state were met by 
means of an efficient and well-functioning political police organi- 
zation but also to prevent the police from becoming too powerful 
and threatening the party leadership. Achieving these two goals 
required the careful recruitment and promotion of KGB officials 
who had the appropriate education, experience, and qualifications 
as determined by the party. Judging from the limited biographi- 
cal information on KGB employees, the Komsomol and the party 
were the main sources of recruitment to the KGB. Russians and 
Ukrainians predominated in the KGB; other nationalities were only 
minimally represented. In the non-Russian republics, KGB chair- 
men were often representatives of the indigenous nationality, as 
were other KGB employees. In such areas, however, KGB head- 
quarters in Moscow appointed Russians to the post of first deputy 
chairman, and they monitored activities and reported back to 
Moscow. 

Career patterns indicate that the KGB was a highly profession- 
al bureaucratic group with distinct characteristics that set it off from 
other Soviet elites. After the purges at the top levels of the police 
apparatus and the introduction of party and other cadres into the 
newly created KGB in 1954, the influx of outsiders was small, ex- 
cept at the very highest levels. Turnover rates were low in the 
KGB as compared with other bureaucracies, and KGB officials en- 
joyed security of tenure, as well as numerous material rewards. 
The KGB became — and in the 1980s remained — a closed bureau- 
cracy of specialists, similar to the military. The homogeneity of 



770 



Internal Security 



their backgrounds and their sense of eliteness created a strong esprit 
de corps among KGB officials. 

Domestic Security and the Committee for 
State Security 

The KGB had a variety of domestic security functions. It was 
empowered by law to arrest and investigate individuals for certain 
types of political and economic crimes. It was also responsible for 
censorship, propaganda, and the protection of state and military 
secrets. 

Legal Prerogatives 

In carrying out its task of ensuring state security, the KGB was 
empowered by law to uncover and investigate certain political 
crimes set forth in the Russian Republic's Code of Criminal Proce- 
dure and the criminal codes of other republics. According to the 
Russian Republic's Code of Criminal Procedure, which came into 
force in 1960 and has been revised several times since then, the 
KGB had the authority, together with the Procuracy, to investigate 
the political crimes of treason, espionage, terrorism, sabotage, anti- 
Soviet agitation and propaganda, divulgence of state secrets, smug- 
gling, illegal exit abroad, and illegal entry into the Soviet Union. 
In addition, the KGB was empowered, along with the Procuracy 
and the MVD, to investigate the following economic crimes: stealing 
of state property by appropriation or embezzlement or by abuse 
of official position and stealing of state property or socialist property 
(see Glossary) on an especially large scale. 

In carrying out arrests and investigations for these crimes, the 
KGB was subject to specific rules that were set forth in the Code 
of Criminal Procedure. The Procuracy was charged with ensur- 
ing that these rules were observed. In practice, the Procuracy had 
little authority over the KGB, and the latter was permitted to cir- 
cumvent the regulations whenever politically expedient. In 1988 
closing some of these loopholes was discussed, and legal experts 
called for a greater role for the Procuracy in protecting Soviet 
citizens from abuse by the investigatory organs. As of May 1989, 
however, few concrete changes had been publicized. 

It is important to note that the KGB frequendy enlisted the MVD 
and the Procuracy to instigate proceedings against political non- 
conformists on charges that did not fall under the KGB's purview. 
Dissidents were often charged for defaming the Soviet state and 
violating public order. Sometimes the KGB arranged to have them 
charged for ordinary crimes, such as hooliganism or drug abuse. 



771 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 
Policy 

The intensity of KGB campaigns against political crime varied 
considerably over the years. The Khrushchev period was marked 
by relative tolerance toward dissent, whereas Brezhnev reinstituted 
a harsh policy. The level of political arrests rose markedly from 
1965 to 1973. In 1972 Brezhnev began to pursue detente, and the 
regime apparently tried to appease Western critics by moderating 
KGB operations against dissent. There was a sharp reversal after 
the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, and arrests 
again became more numerous. In 1986, Gorbachev's second year 
in power, restraint was reintroduced, and the KGB curtailed its 
arrests. 

The forcible confinement of dissidents in psychiatric hospitals, 
where debilitating drugs were administered, was an alternative to 
straightforward arrests. This procedure avoided the unfavorable 
publicity that often arose with criminal trials of dissenters. Also, 
by labeling dissenters madmen, authorities hoped to discredit their 
actions and deprive them of support. The KGB often arranged for 
such commitments and maintained an active presence in psychiatric 
hospitals, despite the fact that these institutions were not under its 
formal authority. The Gorbachev leadership, as part of its general 
program of reform, introduced some reforms that were designed 
to prevent the abuse of psychiatric commitment by Soviet authori- 
ties, but the practical effects of these changes remained unclear in 
1989. 

In addition to arrests, psychiatric commitment, and other forms 
of coercion, the KGB also exercised a preventive function, designed 
to prevent political crimes and suppress deviant political attitudes. 
The KGB carried out this function in a variety of ways. For ex- 
ample, when the KGB learned that a Soviet citizen was having 
contact with foreigners or speaking in a negative fashion about the 
Soviet regime, it made efforts to set him or her straight by means 
of a "chat." The KGB also devoted great efforts to political in- 
doctrination and propaganda. At local and regional levels, KGB 
officials regularly visited factories, schools, collective farms (see Glos- 
sary), and Komsomol organizations to deliver talks on political 
vigilance. National and republic-level KGB officials wrote articles 
and gave speeches on this theme. Their main message was that 
the Soviet Union was threatened by the large-scale efforts of Western 
intelligence agencies to penetrate the country by using cultural, 
scientific, and tourist exchanges to send in spies. In addition, the 
KGB claimed that Soviet citizens were barraged by hostile 



772 




Headquarters of the 
Committee for State 
Security (KGB) and 
Lubianka Prison, 
Dzerzhinskii Square, Moscow 
Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 



Plaque on KGB building, 
Moscow, honoring 
former KGB chairman 
Iurii V. Andropov 

Courtesy Jimmy Pritchard 




773 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

propaganda from the West as part of an effort to undermine the 
Soviet system. 

Another important facet of KGB preventive work was censor- 
ship of literature and other media, which it exercised at both an 
informal and a formal level. The KGB censored informally by 
harassing writers and artists, arranging for their expulsion from 
professional organizations or from their jobs, and threatening them 
with prosecution for their unorthodox views. Such forms of intimi- 
dation forced many writers and artists to exercise self-censorship 
by producing only what they thought would be acceptable. The 
KGB maintained strong surveillance over the Union of Writers, 
as well as over the journalists' and artists' unions, where KGB 
representatives occupied top administrative posts. 

The KGB played an important role in the system of formal cen- 
sorship by taking part in the work of the Main Administration for 
Safeguarding State Secrets in the Press (Glavnoe upravlenie po 
okhrane gosudarstvennykh tain v pechati — Glavlit; see Adminis- 
tration of the Mass Media and the Arts, ch. 9). Some Western 
specialists believe that at least one of Glavlit 's deputy chiefs was 
a KGB official and that the KGB assisted in Glavlit 's compilation 
of its Censor's Index, a thick volume, updated frequently, listing all 
military, technical, statistical, and other subjects that could not be 
publicized without special permission from the Central Committee. 

Another important internal security task of the KGB was to pro- 
vide the leadership with information about the dissident movement 
and the political attitudes and opinions of the public as a whole. 
This task by its very nature gave the KGB influence over policy, 
particularly because Soviet leaders had no direct contact with dis- 
sidents and nonconformists and thus relied on KGB information 
about motives and foreign connections and on its estimates of num- 
bers and support for various groups. The situation probably 
changed somewhat after Gorbachev introduced the policy of glas- 
nost' in early 1987. After that the KGB no longer had a monopoly 
on information about the country's political mood because Soviet 
citizens expressed their views more freely in the press. Neverthe- 
less, the KGB's information gathering continued to be important 
because direct criticism of the political system was suppressed. Com- 
puters no doubt improved KGB methods of processing informa- 
tion and conducting research. 

The KGB was given considerable latitude in carrying out the 
party leadership's policy toward dissent. In other words, the Polit- 
buro decided on broad policy guidelines, but the KGB made the 
day-to-day decisions. Many dissidents, for example, viewed the 
KGB as extremely powerful and as enjoying considerable autonomy 



774 



Internal Security 



in implementing regime policy. Although the party leadership 
clearly determined the general policy toward dissent, it had an in- 
terest in promoting the idea that the KGB was responsible because 
the KGB could then be blamed for the injustices suffered by citizens. 
Furthermore, the image of the KGB's omnipotence no doubt helped 
to prevent anti-Soviet behavior. As Seweryn Bialer, a Western 
Sovietologist, observed of the Soviet system, ''Without doubt the 
key to stability has been the high visibility of the coercive appara- 
tus and policies." 

Special Departments in the Armed Forces 

Since the 1920s, an important internal security function of the 
security police has been ensuring the political reliability of the armed 
forces. This function was carried out through a network of so-called 
special departments (osobye otdely), which were under the supervi- 
sion of the KGB's Third Chief Directorate. Officially designated 
as a military counterintelligence organization, the Third Chief 
Directorate performed tasks that extended far beyond counter- 
intelligence to encompass extensive political surveillance of the mili- 
tary and other military security duties. 

Special departments were responsible for security clearances of 
military personnel and for ensuring that security regulations and 
procedures were strictiy observed in all branches of the armed forces. 
Thus they had control over (or at least immediate access to) mili- 
tary personnel files and information relating to the political relia- 
bility of members of the armed forces. The leadership claimed that 
their armed forces were continually threatened by ideological 
sabotage, i.e., attempts by Western governments to subvert in- 
dividuals through bourgeois propaganda aimed at weakening their 
political convictions. Hence a key element of special department 
activities was political surveillance on both a formal and an infor- 
mal level. 

Officially, special departments were empowered to investigate 
armed forces personnel for the same crimes that were under KGB 
purview for ordinary citizens. In addition, the KGB had the author- 
ity to investigate military crimes defined in Article 259 of the 
Russian Republic's Code of Criminal Procedure — disclosure of a 
military secret or loss of a document containing a military secret. 
In investigating cases under their purview, special department em- 
ployees were supposed to follow set rules of criminal procedure, 
but they did not always do so. In 1989, however, they no longer 
had the right to conduct trials, as they did during Stalin's time. 
Once an investigation was completed, the case was tried by spe- 
cial military tribunals under the Main Military Procuracy. 



775 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

In addition to criminal investigations, the special departments 
had extensive informal responsibilities for ensuring the political 
reliability of the armed forces. Soviet authorities stated that they 
prevented political crimes by various preventive measures. Thus 
they carried on daily educational activities to increase political 
vigilance and communist ideological convictions among the armed 
forces and monitored telephone conversations and correspon- 
dence of military personnel. Special departments relied heavily on 
a broad network of informers, recruited from among military per- 
sonnel. 

The special departments were also charged with protecting all 
state and military secrets, including those involving nuclear 
weapons, a task that placed them in a position of considerable stra- 
tegic importance. One Soviet official pointed out that "the relia- 
ble defense of Soviet forces from all types of espionage took on 
special significance when the basic defensive strength of the coun- 
try came to consist of the most contemporary weapons systems, 
especially ballistic nuclear weapons." 

According to Western sources, the KGB had custody and trans- 
port responsibilities for nuclear charges, which were separated from 
missiles and aircraft, until the late 1960s. At that time the KGB 
apparently relinquished its physical control over nuclear warheads, 
but it remained involved in the nuclear control process. Not only 
did it maintain a strategic communications network independent 
of the military communications system, but its responsibilities for 
protecting nuclear secrets presumably gave the KGB access to 
nuclear weapons installations as well as to military plans regard- 
ing the use of nuclear weapons. 

The Foreign Intelligence Role of the Committee 
for State Security 

The KGB played an important role in furthering Soviet foreign 
policy objectives abroad. In addition to straightforward intelligence 
collection and counterintelligence, the KGB participated in the 
Kremlin's program of active measures. KGB officials also con- 
tributed to foreign policy decision making. 

Organization 

The First Chief Directorate of the KGB was responsible for KGB 
operations abroad. According to John Barron, a Western author- 
ity, the First Chief Directorate was composed of three separate direc- 
torates: Directorate S, which oversaw illegal agents (those under 
deep cover) throughout the world; Directorate T, responsible for 



776 



Soviet intelligence collection ship at sea 
Courtesy United States Navy 

the collection of scientific and technological intelligence; and Direc- 
torate K, which carried out infiltration of foreign intelligence and 
security services and exercised surveillance over Soviet citizens 
abroad. In addition, the First Chief Directorate had three impor- 
tant services: Service I, which analyzed and distributed intelligence 
collected by KGB foreign intelligence officers and agents, published 
a daily current events summary for the Politburo, and made fore- 
casts of future world developments; Service A, which was re- 
sponsible for planning and implementing active measures; and 
Service R, which evaluated KGB operations abroad. 

The operational core of the First Chief Directorate lay in its eleven 
geographical departments, which supervised KGB employees as- 
signed to residencies abroad. These officers, or rezidenty, operated 
under legal cover, engaging in intelligence collection, espionage, 
and active measures. The long-time head of the First Chief Direc- 
torate, Vladimir Kriuchkov, who had served under Andropov and 
his successors, was named head of the KGB in 1988. The Second 
Chief Directorate also played a role in foreign intelligence in 1989. 
It recruited agents for intelligence purposes from among foreign- 
ers stationed in the Soviet Union, and it engaged in counterintel- 
ligence by uncovering attempts of foreign intelligence services to 
recruit Soviet citizens. 



777 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Intelligence and Counterintelligence 

KGB intelligence gathering in the West increased markedly after 
the era of detente began in 1972. Detente permitted a vast influx 
of Soviet and East European diplomatic, cultural, and commer- 
cial officials into the United States and other Western countries. 
KGB officers and their East European counterparts operated under 
various guises, posing as diplomats, trade officials, journalists, scien- 
tists, and students. The proportion of Soviet citizens abroad who 
were engaged in intelligence gathering was estimated to range from 
30 to 40 percent in the United States to over 50 percent in some 
Third World countries. In addition, many Soviet representatives 
who were not intelligence officers were nevertheless given some sort 
of assignment by the KGB. 

Apparently, the First Chief Directorate had little trouble recruit- 
ing personnel for its foreign operations. The high salaries, mili- 
tary rank, access to foreign currency, and opportunity to live abroad 
offered attractive enticements to young people choosing a career. 
First Chief Directorate recruits were usually graduates of presti- 
gious higher education institutions and had knowledge of one or 
more foreign languages. The KGB had a two-year postgraduate 
training course for these recruits at its Higher Intelligence School 
located near Moscow. The curriculum included the use of ciphers, 
arms and sabotage training, history and economics according to 
Marxist-Leninist (see Glossary) theory, CPSU history, law, and 
foreign languages. 

The KGB was the primary agency responsible for supplying the 
Kremlin with foreign intelligence. According to former Soviet diplo- 
mat Arkady Shevchenko, Moscow cabled out questions on a daily 
basis to KGB rezidenty abroad to guide them in their tasks. In ad- 
dition to political intelligence, KGB officers concentrated increas- 
ingly on efforts to acquire advanced Western technology. The KGB 
reportedly acted as a collector of militarily significant Western tech- 
nology (in the form of documents and hardware) on behalf of the 
Military Industrial Commission of the Presidium of the Council 
of Ministers. This commission coordinated the development of all 
Soviet weapons systems, along with the program to acquire Western 
technology, and it levied requirements among the KGB, the Main 
Intelligence Directorate (see Glossary), and several other agencies, 
including those of East European intelligence services. The KGB 
and the GRU increased their technical collection efforts consider- 
ably in the early 1980s, when the number of requirements levied 
on them by the Military Industrial Commission rose by about 50 
percent. 



778 



Internal Security 



The Andropov era saw a greater orientation in the KGB toward 
electronic espionage — communications intercepts and satellites — to 
supplement intelligence gathered by agents. According to Robert 
Campbell, the Soviet Union deployed at least three satellites for 
intelligence collection. Some of the intelligence may have been 
strictly military and therefore collected by the GRU, but the KGB 
reportedly also made use of these satellites. 

Active Measures 

Active measures were clandestine operations designed to further 
Soviet foreign policy goals and to extend Soviet influence throughout 
the world. This type of activity had long been employed by the 
Soviet Union abroad, but it became more widespread and more 
effective in the late 1960s. Among these covert techniques was dis- 
information: leaking of false information and rumors to foreign 
media or planting forgeries in an attempt to deceive the public or 
the political elite in a given country or countries. The United States 
was the prime target of disinformation, in particular forgery oper- 
ations, which were designed to damage foreign and defense poli- 
cies of the United States in a variety of ways. Defectors reported 
that the Soviet Union and its allies circulated forged documents — 
often purporting to be speeches, letters, or policy statements by 
United States officials — containing false information. The use of 
international front (see Glossary) organizations and foreign com- 
munist parties to expand the Soviet Union's political influence and 
further its propaganda campaigns was another form of active 
measures. The World Peace Council was the largest and most im- 
portant of Soviet front groups. Together with the International 
Department of the Central Committee, the KGB funneled money 
to these organizations and recruited agents of the Soviet Union to 
serve on their administrative bodies. 

Other active measures involved support for terrorists and insur- 
gents. As of 1989, there was no direct, public evidence that Soviet 
citizens had planned or orchestrated terrorist acts by groups from 
Western Europe or the Middle East, but there was much indirect 
evidence to show that the Soviet Union did support international 
terrorism. The Soviet Union maintained close relationships with 
a number of governments and organizations that were direct sup- 
porters of terrorist groups. The Soviet Union sold large quantities 
of arms to Libya and Syria, for example, and also maintained a 
close alliance with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), 
providing it with arms, monetary assistance, and paramilitary train- 
ing. Moscow's surrogate, Cuba, played a central role in Latin 
American terrorism by providing groups with training, arms, and 



779 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

sanctuary, and the Soviet Union's East European satellite states 
often served as middlemen or subcontractors for channeling aid 
to terrorist groups. Although the KGB, with some exceptions, 
avoided direct involvement with terrorist operations, it played an 
important role in diverting aid to these groups and providing the 
Soviet leadership with intelligence reports on their activities. 

The KGB also was heavily involved in the support of "wars of 
national liberation" in the Third World. Together with satellite in- 
telligence services, the KGB helped to organize military training 
and political indoctrination of leftist guerrillas, as well as providing 
arms and advisers. The manipulation of wars of national liberation 
enabled the Soviet Union to influence the political future of the coun- 
tries in question and to make their new governments more respon- 
sive to Soviet objectives. The Soviet regime concentrated mainly 
on African countries until the late 1970s but then extended its sup- 
port for "national liberation movements" to Central America, where 
it regularly employed the services of Cuba. 

The KGB relied heavily on the intelligence services of satellite 
countries in carrying out both active measures and espionage oper- 
ations. The intelligence services of the German Democratic Repub- 
lic (East Germany), Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, 
and Cuba formed important adjuncts to the KGB. Although for- 
mally subordinated to their own governments, these satellite in- 
telligence services were, according to many Western experts, heavily 
influenced by the KGB. A former official in the Czechoslovak in- 
telligence service stated that Soviet intelligence was informed about 
every major aspect of Czechoslovak intelligence activities, and Soviet 
advisers (called liaison officers) participated in planning major oper- 
ations and assessing the results. As far back as the 1960s, the KGB 
introduced a new element of coordination with the satellite intelli- 
gence services through the creation of departments for disinfor- 
mation in East German, Czechoslovak, and Hungarian intelligence 
services and the establishment of direct lines of communication from 
these departments to the KGB. 

Soviet active measures involved not only KGB and satellite in- 
telligence services but also several other Soviet agencies, which all 
participated in a coordinated effort to further Soviet policy objec- 
tives. In addition to the KGB, the Central Committee's Interna- 
tional Department took a leading role in directing and implementing 
active measures. 

Influence on Foreign Policy 

The KGB participated in the foreign policy decision-making 
process at the highest level because its chief was a member of the 



780 



Internal Security 



Politburo. At the same time, it influenced the formulation of for- 
eign policy at a lower level as an executor of that policy, a provider 
of information, and a generator of ideas, solutions, and alterna- 
tives. Thus, for example, when the Kremlin decided to invade 
Czechoslovakia in 1968, KGB chief Andropov, who was an ex- 
pert on Eastern Europe and had a direct line of intelligence from 
Czechoslovakia, presumably influenced the decision-making process 
significantly. Furthermore, the KGB, as the main provider of in- 
telligence to the leadership, was in a position to influence decision 
making by screening and interpreting the information. The KGB 
probably favored the invasion because of the threat posed by a pos- 
sible spillover of unrest into the Soviet Union. Also, efforts by 
Czechoslovak reformers to reorganize their security police jeo- 
pardized KGB operations in Czechoslovakia. Considerable evidence 
showed that the KGB, in order to bolster the prointerventionist 
position, used intelligence and covert action to produce proof of 
counterrevolution in Czechoslovakia. 

Andropov did not always favor military intervention as a solu- 
tion to international problems, however. Other considerations, such 
as the Soviet Union's international image, no doubt affected his views 
on the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan (which he reportedly did not 
favor) and the 1980-81 Polish crisis (where he probably was among 
those who opposed an invasion). Both these crises occurred at a time 
when the KGB was trying to mobilize West European public opin- 
ion against plans by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) 
to introduce intermediate-range missiles in Europe. 

Chebrikov did not have Andropov's foreign policy expertise when 
he took over as head of the KGB in 1982, but his admission to the 
Politburo gave him a voice in foreign policy at the highest level. 
In addition, many Western experts believe that the KGB chairman 
served on the Defense Council, an important collegial decision- 
making body that provided top-level coordination for defense-related 
activities of the Soviet government (see Defense Council, ch. 18). 
Chebrikov 's numerous trips to Eastern Europe after he became head 
of the KGB indicated that he was personally involved in KGB oper- 
ations beyond Soviet borders, and his forceful advocacy of Soviet 
"counterpropaganda" efforts abroad implied a commitment to a 
strong foreign policy role for the KGB. Kriuchkov, who became 
head of the KGB in 1988, had been extensively involved in foreign 
operations as the chief of the First Chief Directorate of the KGB. 

The Ministry of Internal Affairs 

The MVD, which encompassed the regular, or nonpolitical, 
police, had a long history in the Soviet Union. It was first established 



781 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

as the NKVD on November 18, 1917. It has undergone several 
organizational and name changes since then. When the KGB was 
established in 1954, the security police was separated from the regu- 
lar police. The MVD was originally established as a union-republic 
ministry (see Glossary) with headquarters in Moscow, but in 1960 
the Khrushchev leadership, as part of its general downgrading of 
the police, abolished the central MVD, whose functions were as- 
sumed by republic ministries of internal affairs. Then, in 1962 the 
MVD was redesignated the Ministry for the Preservation of Pub- 
lic Order (Ministerstvo okhrany obshchestvennogo poriadka — 
MOOP). This name change implied a break with the all-powerful 
MVD created by Beria, as well as a narrower range of functions. 
The changes were accompanied by increasing criticism of the regu- 
lar police in the Soviet press for its shortcomings in combating 
crime. 

Following Khrushchev's ouster, Brezhnev did much to raise the 
status of the regular police. In 1966, after placing one of his pro- 
teges, Nikolai A. Shchelokov, in the post of chief, Brezhnev rein- 
stated MOOP as a union-republic ministry. Two years later, 
MOOP was renamed the MVD, an apparent symbol of its in- 
creased authority. Efforts were made to raise the effectiveness of 
the MVD by recruiting better-qualified personnel and upgrading 
equipment and training. Brezhnev's death, however, left the MVD 
vulnerable to his opponents, Andropov in particular. Just a month 
after Brezhnev died, Shchelokov was ousted as its chief and replaced 
by the former KGB chairman, Vitalii Fedorchuk. Shchelokov was 
later tried on corruption charges. A similar fate befell Brezhnev's 
son-in-law, Iurii Churbanov, who was removed from the post of 
first deputy chief in 1984 and later arrested on criminal charges. 
After bringing several officials from the KGB and from the party 
apparatus into the MVD, Andropov sought to make it an effec- 
tive organization for rooting out widespread corruption; Gorbachev 
continued these efforts. 

Functions and Organization 

The MVD had a wide array of duties. It was responsible for 
uncovering and investigating certain categories of crime, appre- 
hending criminals, supervising the internal passport (see Glossary) 
system, maintaining public order, combating public intoxication, 
supervising parolees, managing prisons and labor camps, provid- 
ing fire protection, and controlling traffic. Until early 1988, the 
MVD was also in charge of special psychiatric hospitals, but a law 
passed in January 1988 transferred all psychiatric hospitals to the 
authority of the Ministry of Health. 



782 



Internal Security 



As a union-republic ministry under the Council of Ministers, 
the MVD had its headquarters in Moscow and branches in the 
republic and regional government apparatus, as well as in oblasts 
and cities. Unlike the KGB, the internal affairs apparatus was sub- 
ject to dual subordination; local internal affairs offices reported both 
to the executive committees of their respective local Soviets and to 
their superior offices in the MVD hierarchy. 

The MVD headquarters in Moscow was divided into several 
directorates and offices (see fig. 38). The Directorate for Combat- 
ing the Embezzlement of Socialist Property and Speculation was 
established in the late 1960s to control such white-collar crime as 
embezzlement and falsification of economic plan records. The 
Criminal Investigation Directorate assisted the Procuracy, and on 
occasion the KGB, in the investigation of criminal cases. There 
was a separate department for investigating and prosecuting minor 
cases, such as traffic violations, and the Maintenance of Public 
Order Directorate, which was responsible for ensuring order in pub- 
lic places and for preventing outbreaks of public unrest. 

The members of the militsiia (uniformed police), as part of the 
regular police force, were distinguished by their gray uniforms with 
red piping. The duties of the militsiia included patrolling public 
places to ensure order and arresting persons who violated the law, 
including vagrants and drunks. Resisting arrest or preventing a 
police officer from executing his duties was a serious crime in the 
Soviet Union, punishable by one to five years' imprisonment. Kill- 
ing a policeman was punishable by death. 

The Office of Visas and Registration was charged with register- 
ing Soviet citizens and foreigners residing in each precinct of a city 
and with issuing internal passports to Soviet citizens. Soviet citizens 
wishing to emigrate from the Soviet Union and foreigners wishing 
to travel within the Soviet Union had to obtain visas from this office. 
The Office of Recruitment and Training supervised the recruit- 
ment of new members of the militsiia, who were recommended by 
work collectives and public organizations. The local party and Kom- 
somol bodies screened candidates thoroughly to ensure their polit- 
ical reliability. Individuals serving in the militsiia were exempt from 
the regular military draft. 

Leadership 

In January 1986, when Fedorchuk was retired, Aleksandr V. 
Vlasov was appointed the chief of the MVD. Vlasov had no back- 
ground in the police apparatus. In September 1988, Vlasov be- 
came a candidate member of the CPSU Politburo, and the following 
month he was replaced as chief of the MVD by Vadim V. Bakatin. 



783 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



ICAL 
ORATE 








O LU 




Q_ DC 




Q 






CO 






CO 


DC 






DC 


LL < 

Oll 




DC 


31S 






TE 


z 


h- -i 




CO 




INIS 
RNA 




MINI 


JTY 1 








D_ 


z 






LU 
Q 



Qui 



52 

DC O 
Q_ LU 

lu 99 

DC Q 







LU 






IRECTOR/ 
OF MILITI 












Q 



i=< 

CO DC 
LU O 
> h- 

z o 



dco< 

5 Q. DC 

goo 

i— DC <~> 



op 



CD 



LU 



3 
D_ — 

o 



< z 
o< 

I— CD 
OS 

DC r ^ 



> 
LL I — 2 

ODCO 

r_ lu ^ 
Lu^o 

I I — LU 

N CO Q_ 
N □ CO 
LU < _ 
CD — Q 
^OZ 

LuO< 

CO 




DCO 
Oh 

1- o 

O LU 



i9 



> 





z 


CO 









- 






DC 


LL 


h- 


O 


CO 


LU 


O 


O 


LU 


LL 


DC 


LL 


O 




Z 




< 



784 



Internal Security 



Bakatin was made a full member of the CPSU Central Commit- 
tee in March 1986, but his police experience, if any, was not known 
in the West. In 1989 Leonid G. Sizov and Vasilii P. Trushin were 
first deputy ministers of the MVD. In addition, the MVD had ap- 
proximately eight deputy ministers. 

The MVD published a vast amount of popular literature devoted 
to the glorification of the MVD in order to attract well-qualified 
cadres to its ranks. The fact that MVD salaries were considerably 
lower than those for the KGB and that working conditions were 
generally poor (long hours and out-of-date equipment) made re- 
cruitment somewhat difficult. The MVD underwent an extensive 
purge in the mid-1980s as part of the party's effort to rid the or- 
ganization of corruption and inefficiency. Over 170,000 police 
officers were fired between 1983 and 1988 for irresponsibility, lack 
of discipline, and violations of the law. 

Control by the Party 

The chief vehicle for party control over the MVD was the State 
and Legal Department of the Secretariat, which had a special sec- 
tion for supervising the MVD. This section presumably partici- 
pated in the selection of MVD personnel and evaluated the MVD's 
work in terms of how well it carried out party directives. 

Another means through which the party exercised control over 
the MVD was the Political Directorate of the MVD. This direc- 
torate, a network of political organs existing throughout the MVD, 
was established in 1983 and operated in a way similar to that of 
the Main Political Directorate of the Soviet Army and Navy. The 
Political Directorate was created because local party officials 
were not exercising sufficient control over the activities of in- 
ternal affairs officials but rather were colluding with them in com- 
miting economic crimes. Its chief until April 1988 was Viktor 
Gladyshev, a former section chief in the Administrative Organs 
Department (present-day State and Legal Department). Gladyshev 
was replaced by the former personnel chief of the MVD, Anatolii 
Anikiev. 

The minister of internal affairs was usually a member of the Cen- 
tral Committee but as of 1989 had never enjoyed membership on 
the Politburo. Thus the regular police executed party policy but 
had little voice in policy formulation at the national level. At the 
local level, however, the police chief may have had more impact 
on decision making in the law enforcement realm because he was 
generally included on both the local soviet executive committee and 
the local party committee. 



785 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

The Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Judicial Organs, 
and Nonpolitical Crime 

The Soviet Union had two separate legal systems. The first main- 
tained law and order on a daily basis, enforced the law, and adju- 
dicated disputes that arose among the citizenry. This system was 
administered by the organs of justice: the MVD, the Procuracy, 
the Ministry of Justice, and the courts. The other legal system, 
administered by the KGB on behalf of the party leadership, was 
arbitrary and repressive and was used to suppress and punish crit- 
ics of the Soviet regime. Some cases did not fall neady into one 
category or another. There was a gray area in which a seemingly 
ordinary case took on a political character. As Western expert 
Gordon B. Smith pointed out, "Soviet legal policy must bridge 
these two systems, providing a framework for the functioning of 
each." 

Socialist Legality 

Soviet law displayed many special characteristics that derived 
from the socialist (see Glossary) nature of the Soviet state and re- 
flected Marxist- Leninist ideology. Lenin accepted the Marxist con- 
ception of the law and the state as instruments of coercion in the 
hands of the bourgeoisie and postulated the creation of popular, 
informal tribunals to administer revolutionary justice. Alongside 
this Utopian trend, a dictatorial trend developed that advocated the 
use of law and legal institutions to suppress all opposition to the 
regime. The latter trend reached its zenith under Stalin, when the 
administration of justice was carried out mainly by the secu- 
rity police in special tribunals. During the de-Stalinization of the 
Khrushchev era, a new trend developed, based on socialist legal- 
ity (see Glossary), that stressed the need to protect the procedural 
and statutory rights of citizens, while still calling for obedience to 
the state. New legal codes, introduced in 1960, were part of the 
effort to establish legal norms in administering laws. Although so- 
cialist legality remained in force after 1960, the dictatorial and Uto- 
pian trends continued to influence the legal process. Persecution 
of political and religious dissenters, in flagrant violation of their 
legal rights, continued, but at the same time there was a tendency 
to decriminalize lesser offenses by handing them over to people's 
courts (see Glossary) and administrative agencies and dealing with 
them by education rather than by incarceration. 

By late 1986, the Gorbachev regime was stressing anew the im- 
portance of individual rights in relation to the state and criticizing 
those who violated the procedural laws in implementing Soviet 



786 



Internal Security 



justice. This signaled a resurgence of socialist legality as the 
dominant trend. It should be noted, however, that socialist legal- 
ity itself still lacked important features associated with Western 
jurisprudence. In particular, the ultimate control of the legal sys- 
tem lay with the party leadership, which was not democratically 
elected by, and therefore not responsible to, the public at large. 

The Procuracy 

The Procuracy was the most powerful institution in the Soviet 
system of justice relating to nonpolitical matters. It was a hierar- 
chical organization representing all public prosecutors, all the way 
down to the city or village level. As specified in the Soviet Consti- 
tution, the procurator general of the Soviet Union was appointed 
by the Supreme Soviet and controlled Procuracy officials throughout 
the system. Employees of the Procuracy were not subject to the 
authority of their local Soviets, but they were subject to the authority 
of the party. The Procuracy had a wide range of functions, involving 
itself at all stages in the criminal process. Procurators carried out 
investigations of the majority of cases; supervised investigations 
carried out by the MVD, the KGB, and the Procuracy's own em- 
ployees; authorized arrests; prosecuted offenders; and supervised 
prisons. In addition, procurators supervised parole and the release 
of prisoners and referred judicial decisions to higher courts for 
review. Procurators also oversaw the operation of all government 
bodies, enterprises, officials, and social organizations to ensure that 
they were observing the law. Although the Procuracy possessed 
the formal authority to supervise the KGB in carrying out arrests 
and investigations in political cases, there was little evidence that 
the Procuracy actually exercised this function. 

■ 

Military Justice 

Military justice in the Soviet Union was administered by the 
Main Military Procuracy, which was subordinated to the procu- 
rator general and responsible for ensuring that laws were observed 
within the military. It also supervised criminal investigations of 
armed forces personnel carried out by its employees, as well as by 
the KGB (in cases of political crime). Military cases were tried in 
military tribunals, which were under the authority of the Supreme 
Court. 

The Judiciary and the Legal Profession 

The court structure in the Soviet Union, set forth in the Consti- 
tution and governed by several all-union and republic statutes, was 
quite complex. In courts of first instance, one judge sat with two 



787 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

elected people's assessors (lay judges), who were ordinary citizens, 
elected at general meetings of factories, offices, collective farms, 
or residential blocks for a term of two years. Appellate and review 
procedure came before a bench of three judges. Although a legal 
education was not required and any citizen over the age of twenty- 
four could in principle be elected to the post of judge, more than 
95 percent of all judges had higher legal education. The party care- 
fully screened candidates for election to the position of judge, which 
had a term of five years. Most judges above the local level were 
party members. In addition to determining innocence or guilt, 
judges performed an important function of socialization, often lec- 
turing defendants for failing to uphold socialist values. Judges were 
part of the union-republic Ministry of Justice and the fifteen republic 
ministries of justice. There was no system of binding precedent, 
but supreme courts at all-union and republic levels gave ''guiding 
explanations" to be followed. 

Advocates, or defense attorneys, were controlled by the Minis- 
try of Justice at the all-union and republic level and at the local 
level by the justice department of the local soviet. Advocates were 
usually law school graduates with some practical training. The 
Soviet Union had approximately 18,000 advocates, organized into 
colleges of around 150 attorneys each. These colleges maintained 
consultation bureaus, each with a staff of about twenty, in most 
towns and cities. The bureaus provided legal advice on a variety 
of issues, such as divorce, custody, inheritance, property rights, 
and housing disputes. The bureaus also offered legal defense for 
persons accused of criminal offenses. According to the 1977 Con- 
stitution, all defendants had the right to legal counsel. Legal fees 
were set by the state and were low enough for most people to af- 
ford. According to Soviet emigres, however, many defense law- 
yers expected additional payments or gifts "under the table." 

Legal advisers to government agencies and departments, enter- 
prises, factories, and state farms (see Glossary) were called iuriskon- 
suVty. Numbering approximately 29,000 in 1989, they represented 
their employer in court and drafted internal rules, contracts, and 
commercial documents. 

Legal Codes and Abuses of the System 

The fundamental principles of the civil and criminal branches 
of Soviet law were established at the all-union level and then set 
down in the legal codes of the republics. The Civil Code dealt with 
contract law, tort law, and law governing wills and inheritance. 
Separate codes existed for family law and labor law. The Crimi- 
nal Code concerned itself with all aspects of criminal behavior. 



788 



Internal Security 



The Criminal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure of the 
Russian Republic were revised completely (along with the codes 
of the other republics) in 1960, incorporating the 1958 Fundamental 
Principles of Criminal Procedure, approved by the Supreme Soviet. 
These codes represented a sharp departure from the Stalinist crimi- 
nal codes, which had provided a formal legal basis for the arrest 
and prosecution of innocent citizens on groundless charges. Under 
the Stalinist code, for example, an individual could be prosecuted 
for committing an act not specifically prohibited by the criminal 
code but "analogous" to such an act. The 1960 codes abolished 
the principle of analogy. 

The 1 960 codes defined political crimes in a more restricted form 
and made punishments considerably less severe. They also estab- 
lished procedural rules to govern the arrest and detention of sus- 
pected criminals. According to the law, a suspect could not be 
detained for more than three days without a warrant. Thereafter, 
permission for detention had to be obtained from the procurator 
or from the courts. The maximum period of pretrial detention was 
nine months. At the end of such detention, the accused was entitled 
to the services of a defense lawyer. The trial itself was supposed 
to be public, with the prosecution conducted by the procurator, 
who could recommend sentencing. 

Despite the existence of formal laws to protect the rights of the 
accused, ample evidence indicated that these laws were not ad- 
hered to when political or other interests of the party came into 
play. The party was the ultimate authority in the administration 
of justice, and party officials frequently interfered in the judicial 
process to protect their own interests. Party approval was required 
before appointment to any important position in the legal ap- 
paratus, and this control over personnel appointments gave the 
party substantial power (see Nomenklatura, ch. 7). The party 
also exerted influence in the oversight of the legal and judicial 
organs. 

The party sometimes interfered in the administration of justice. 
CPSU officials put pressure on procurators, judges, and defense 
attorneys in the conduct of individual cases. In some instances, 
party officials pressed members of the legal system to arrest and 
convict innocent persons who were viewed as politically unortho- 
dox. (In these cases, the KGB was often the agency exerting such 
pressure on behalf of the party.) At other times, party officials ar- 
ranged to have crimes covered up or ignored to protect their per- 
sonal or economic interests. This situation frequendy occurred with 
corruption and bribery offenses. 



789 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Nonpolitical Crime and Punishment 

The Soviet Union did not publish comprehensive crime statis- 
tics, so it is difficult to compare its crime rates with those of other 
countries. According to Western observers, robberies, murders, 
and other violent crimes were much less prevalent than in the United 
States. This was explained by the large police presence, strict gun 
controls, and the relatively low incidence of drug abuse. By con- 
trast, white-collar economic crime was extremely common. Bribery 
and covert payments for goods and services were universal, mainly 
because of the paucity of goods and services on the open market. 
Theft of state property was practiced routinely by employees, as 
were other forms of petty theft. In 1989 the Gorbachev leadership 
was making a concerted effort to curtail such white-collar crime. 
Revelations of corruption scandals involving high-level party em- 
ployees appeared in the Soviet media on a regular basis, and there 
were many arrests and prosecutions. 

The death penalty, carried out by shooting, was applied in the 
Soviet Union only in cases of treason, espionage, terrorism, sabo- 
tage, certain types of murder, and large-scale theft of state property 
by officials. Otherwise, the maximum punishment for a first of- 
fender was fifteen years. Parole was permitted in some cases after 
completion of half of the sentence, and periodic amnesties some- 
times also resulted in early release. 

The Soviet Union had few prisons in 1989. About 99 percent 
of convicted criminals served their sentences in labor camps, super- 
vised by the Main Directorate for Corrective Labor Camps (Glav- 
noe upravlenie ispravitel'no-trudovykh lagerei — Gulag), which was 
under the MVD. The camps had four regimes of ascending severity. 
In the strict-regime camps, inmates worked at the most difficult 
jobs, usually outdoors, and received meager rations. Jobs were less 
demanding and rations better in the camps with milder regimes. 
The system of corrective labor was regarded by Soviet authorities 
as successful in that the rate of recividism was quite low. Prisons 
and labor camps, in the views of former inmates and Western ob- 
servers, however, were notorious for their harsh conditions, ar- 
bitrary and sadistic treatment of prisoners, and flagrant human 
rights abuses. In 1989 new legislation, which emphasized rehabili- 
tation rather than punishment, was being drafted to "humanize" 
the special system. Nevertheless, in 1989 conditions for many 
prisoners had changed little. 

Internal Security Troops 

The government of the Soviet Union had several bodies of troops 
under its control for the purpose of ensuring internal security. These 



790 



Moscow militsiia (uniformed police) providing security at the Kremlin for 
a meeting of the historic Congress of People's Deputies in May 1989 

Courtesy Jonathan Tetzlaff 

troops included the Border Troops and Security Troops of the KGB 
and the Internal Troops of the MVD. 

Border Troops of the Committee for State Security 

The Border Troops were organized under the KGB's unnum- 
bered Border Troops Directorate, which was headed in 1989 by 
Army General Viktor Matrosov. He was assisted by one or more 
first deputy chiefs, several deputy chiefs, and a chief of staff. Within 
the directorate, a political administration provided political indoc- 
trination and surveillance on behalf of the party. Western specialists 
reported that there was an intelligence administration within the 
Border Troops Directorate, but this had not been confirmed by 
Soviet sources. 

The Border Troops strength was estimated in 1989 to be in the 
range of 230,000 men. Although under the operational authority 
of the KGB, the Border Troops were conscripted as part of the 
biannual call-up of the Ministry of Defense, and their induction 
and discharge were regulated by the 1967 Law on Universal Mili- 
tary Service, which covered all armed forces of the Soviet Union. 

The legal status, duties, and rights of the Border Troops were 
set forth in the Law on the State Border, confirmed by the Supreme 



791 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Soviet on November 24, 1982. Article 28 defined the basic duties 
of the Border Troops. Their duties included repulsing armed in- 
cursions into Soviet territory; preventing illegal crossings of the 
border or the transport of weapons, explosives, contraband, or sub- 
versive literature across the border; monitoring the observance of 
established procedures at border crossing points; monitoring the 
observance by Soviet and foreign ships of navigation procedures 
in Soviet territorial waters; and assisting state agencies in the preser- 
vation of natural resources and the protection of the environment 
from pollution. Border guards were authorized to examine docu- 
ments and possessions of persons crossing the borders and to con- 
fiscate articles; to conduct inquiries in cases of violations of the state 
border; and to take such actions as arrest, search, and interroga- 
tion of individuals suspected of border violations. 

The Border Troops Directorate administered approximately nine 
border districts (pogranichnye okruga), which covered the nearly 63,000 
kilometers of the state border. Border district boundaries were dis- 
tinct from civil or military district boundaries. The nine border 
districts were subdivided into detachments (ptriady), covering specific 
sections of the border, border command posts {pogranichnye komen- 
datury), passport control points {kontroVno-propusknye punkty), and 
border outposts (zastavy). The border area was divided into a border 
zone, which included the territory of the district and settlements 
adjacent to the state border, and the border strip, which was ap- 
proximately two kilometers in depth, running directly along the 
border. Only permanent residents or those who had obtained spe- 
cial permission from the MVD could enter the border zone. Entry 
into the border strip was forbidden without special permission from 
the Border Troops. 

Soviet sources repeatedly stressed that a border guard was not 
only a soldier but also a defender of Soviet ideology. His mission 
entailed sensitive political tasks, such as detecting subversive litera- 
ture, and shooting citizens attempting to escape across the border. 
Enlisted men were trained with their operational units, whereas 
officers were trained in special Border Troops schools, such as the 
Dzerzhinskii Higher Border Command School and the Higher Bor- 
der School in Moscow. Military-political officers received training 
at the Voroshilov Higher Border Military-Political Academy, 
founded in the 1930s and located outside Leningrad. In 1972 a high- 
er border military-political school was created in Golytsin, near 
Moscow. More recently, higher border command faculties were set 
up at the Frunze Military Academy and the Lenin Military-Political 
Academy. The period of instruction at the Dzerzhinskii Higher Bor- 
der Command School was four years. Officer candidates, who were 



792 



Internal Security 



screened carefully by their local KGB offices before admittance, 
took general higher education courses along with specialized mili- 
tary and political studies. 

To ensure a high level of discipline among personnel of the Border 
Troops, much attention was devoted to political training and in- 
doctrination. For this purpose, a network of political organs, the 
Political Directorate of the Border Troops, was established within 
the Border Troops. It had political departments within all the border 
districts, detachments, and education institutions, and a network 
of full-time party political officers worked among all troop units. 
They conducted political study groups, gave propaganda lectures, 
and worked to increase the level of combat effectiveness among 
the troops. 

Security Troops of the Committee for State Security 

The KGB's Security Troops, which numbered about 40,000 in 
1989, provided the KGB with a coercive potential. Although Soviet 
sources did not specify the functions of these special troops, Western 
analysts thought that one of their main tasks was to guard the top 
leadership in the Kremlin, as well as key government and party 
buildings and officials at the republic and regional levels. Such 
troops were presumably under the Ninth Directorate of the KGB . 

The Security Troops also included several units of signal troops, 
which were reportedly responsible for installation, maintenance, 
and operation of secret communications facilities for leading party 
and government bodies, including the Ministry of Defense. These 
troops were probably under the command of the Eighth Chief Direc- 
torate. Other special KGB troops were intended for counterterrorist 
and counterinsurgency operations. Such troops were reportedly em- 
ployed, along with the MVD's Internal Troops, to suppress pub- 
lic protests and disperse demonstrations, such as that of the Crimean 
Tatars in July 1987 and those in the republics of Armenia and Azer- 
baydzhan in March 1988. Special KGB troops also were trained 
for sabotage and diversionary missions abroad. 

Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs 

Although a component of the armed forces, the Internal Troops 
were subordinate to the MVD. Numbering approximately 260,000 
men in 1989, they were one of the largest formations of special 
troops in the Soviet Union. The Internal Troops were first estab- 
lished in 1919 under the NKVD. Later they were subordinated 
to the state security police, and then in 1934 they were incorpo- 
rated into the expanded NKVD. They were back under the author- 
ity of the security police in the early 1950s, but when the KGB 



793 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

was established in 1954, control of the Internal Troops shifted to 
the MVD. The chief of the Internal Troops from 1954 to late 1987 
was Ivan Iakovlev. Iakovlev's successor was Iurii Shatalin. 

Like the regular army, the Internal Troops for the most part 
were composed of conscripts, who were obliged to serve for a mini- 
mum of two years. The Internal Troops accepted candidates for 
commission both from the ranks of the armed forces and from 
civilian society. The MVD had four schools for training members 
of the officer corps, as well as a separate school for political officers. 

The Internal Troops supported MVD missions by supplement- 
ing the militsiia in ensuring crowd control in large cities and, in 
emergencies, by helping to fight fires. These troops also guarded 
large-scale industrial enterprises, railroad stations, certain large 
stockpiles of food and materiel, and certain communication centers 
that were strategically significant. One of their most important func- 
tions was that of preventing internal disorder that might threaten 
the regime's political stability. They took a direct role in suppressing 
anti- Soviet demonstrations in the non-Russian republics and strikes 
by Soviet workers. In this capacity, the Internal Troops probably 
worked together with the KGB Security Troops. There was little 
evidence to support the theory that the Internal Troops would serve 
as a counterweight to the armed services during a political crisis. 
Most Internal Troops units were composed of infantry alone and 
were not equipped with artillery and tanks; in 1989 there was only 
one operational division of the Internal Troops in Moscow. Ac- 
cording to some Western analysts, the Internal Troops were to per- 
form rear security functions in the event of war, just as they did 
in World War II. 

Internal security in the Soviet Union involved numerous organi- 
zations and was guided by the party leadership. It had always served 
more than ordinary police functions and had covered such areas 
as intelligence gathering and suppression of dissent. The party and 
the regime as a whole depended on the internal security apparatus 
to ensure their own survival. 

* * * 

Among the sources in English on the history of Soviet internal 
security are Ronald Hingley's The Russian Police; George Leggett's 
The Cheka; Simon Wolin and Robert Slusser's The Soviet Secret 
Police; and Boris Levytsky's The Uses of Terror. Amy W. Knight's 
The KGB discusses the current security police. H.J. Berman and 
J.W. Spindler's Soviet Criminal Law and Procedure provides a useful 



794 



Internal Security 

background for understanding Soviet law and legality. William 
Fuller's "The Internal Troops of the MVD SSSR" discusses the 
security forces. (For further information and complete citations, 
see Bibliography.) 



795 



Appendix A 



Table 

1 Metric Conversion Coefficients and Factors 

2 Rulers of Muscovy and the Russian Empire, 1462-1917 

3 Comparative Population Development, Selected Years, 

1850-1910 

4 Historic Land Use, 1797, 1857, and 1887 

5 Principal Soviet Leaders, 1917-89 

6 Area, Population, and Capitals of the Republics, 1989 Census 

7 Natural Resource Potential by Region, 1986 

8 Vital Statistics, Selected Years, 1959-86 

9 Population Distribution by Sex, Selected Years, 1913-87 

10 Population Distribution by Urban-Rural Breakdown, Selected 

Years, 1940-87 

11 Cities with Populations over One Million, 1989 

12 Population Density of the Republics, 1959 and 1982 

13 Nationality, Language, and Religion, 1989 Census 

14 Autonomous Subdivisions, 1989 

15 Republic of Residence and Population of Major Nationali- 

ties, 1989 Census 

16 Russian and East Slavic Populations in the Republics, 1989 

Census 

17 Social Groups, 1913, 1959, and 1986 

18 Average Monthly Wage by Occupation, 1986 

19 Selected Low-Paid Occupations, Early 1980s 

20 Urban-Rural Breakdown, Selected Years, 1917-87 

21 Average Family Size by Nationality Group, 1979 Census 

22 Network of Primary Party Organizations, 1977 and 1987 

23 Membership in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 

Selected Years, 1971-87 

24 Social Position of Members of the Communist Party of the 

Soviet Union, Selected Years, 1971-87 

25 Education Level of Members of the Communist Party of the 

Soviet Union, 1967, 1977, and 1987 

26 Distribution of Major Nationalities in the Communist Party 

of the Soviet Union and in the Soviet Population, 1981 

27 Distribution of Members of the Communist Party of the Soviet 

Union by Sex, Selected Years, 1971-87 

28 Organs and Functions of the Soviet Regime, 1988 

29 Treaties of Friendship and Cooperation with Third World 

Countries, 1989 



797 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Table 

30 Five-Year Plans, 1928-95 

31 Estimated Gross National Product by Sector, Selected Years, 

1970-88 

32 Industrial Production, Estimated Value Added, Selected 

Years, 1970-88 

33 Selected Ministries Producing Military Weapons and Com- 

ponents, 1989 

34 Production of Major Farm Commodities, 1956-87 

35 Farm Machinery Pool, Selected Years, 1960-86 

36 Sown Area for Major Crops, Selected Years, 1940-86 

37 Agricultural Chemicals Delivered, Selected Years, 1970-87 

38 Selected Animal Products, Selected Years, 1940-87 

39 Freight Traffic by Mode of Transport, Selected Years, 1940-86 

40 Major Rail Lines, 1988 

41 Principal Electrified Rail Lines, 1987 

42 Passengers Boarded by Mode of Transport, Selected Years, 

1940-86 

43 Metropolitan Rail Systems (Metros), 1987 

44 Freight Loaded by Mode of Transport, Selected Years, 

1940-86 

45 Passenger Traffic by Mode of Transport, Selected Years, 

1940-86 

46 Principal Aeroflot Aircraft, 1987 

47 Hard-Currency Trading Partners, 1970-85 

48 Soviet Actions Prompting United States Trade Restrictions, 

1974-82 

49 Major Noncommunist Trading Partners, 1980, 1985, and 1986 

50 Trade with Asia, Africa, and Latin America, Selected Years, 

1970-85 

5 1 Trade with Countries of Socialist Orientation, Selected Years, 

1970-85 

52 Trade with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Coun- 

tries, Selected Years, 1970-85 

53 Military Capabilities, 1989 

54 Insignia Colors of the Armed Forces, 1989 

55 Higher Military Schools and Military Academies, 1988 

56 Organizational History of the Police, 1989 



798 



Appendix A 



Table 1. Metric Conversion Coefficients and Factors 



When you know Multiply by To find 



Millimeters 0.04 inches 

Centimeters 0.39 inches 

Meters 3.3 feet 

Kilometers 0.62 miles 

Hectares (10,000 m 2 ) 2.47 acres 

Square kilometers 0.39 square miles 

Cubic meters 35.3 cubic feet 

Liters 0.26 gallons 

Kilograms 2.2 pounds 

Metric tons 0.98 long tons 

1.1 short tons 

2,204 pounds 

Degrees Celsius 9 degrees Fahrenheit 

(Centigrade) divide by 5 

and add 32 



799 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Table 2. Rulers of Muscovy and the Russian Empire, 
1462-1917 



Period Ruler 



Rurikid Dynasty 

1462-1505 Ivan III 

1505-33 Vasilii III 

1533-84 Ivan IV (the Terrible) 

1584-98 Fedor I 

Time of Troubles 

1598-1605 Boris Godunov 

1605 Fedor II 

1605- 06 First False Dmitrii 

1606- 10 Vasilii Shuiskii 

1610-13 Second False Dmitrii 

Romanov Dynasty 

1613-45 . Mikhail Romanov 

1645-76 Alexis I 

1676-82 Fedor III 

1682-89 Sofia (regent) 

1682-96 Ivan V (co-tsar) 

1682-1725 Peter I (the Great) 

1725-27 Catherine I 

1727-30 Peter II 

1730-40 Anna 

1740- 41 Ivan VI 

1741- 62 Elizabeth 

1762 Peter III 

1762-96 i Catherine II (the Great) 

1796-1801 Paul 

1801-25 Alexander I 

1825-55 Nicholas I 

1855-81 Alexander II 

1881-94 Alexander III 

1894-1917 Nicholas II 



Source: Based on information from Marc Raeff, "History of Russia/Union of Soviet So- 
cialist Republics," Academic American Encyclopedia, 16, Danbury, Connecticut, 1986, 
358. 



800 



Appendix A 



Table 3. Comparative Population Development, 
Selected Years, 1850-1910 
(in millions) 



Country 1850 1870 1890 1910 



Russia 60 75 92 140 

France 36 37 38 39 

Germany 35 42 49 65 

Austria-Hungary 31 37 43 52 

Britain 27 31 37 46 

United States 23 38 63 93 



Table 4. Historic Land Use, 1797, 1857, and 1887 
(in percentages) 



Land Use 1797 1857 1887 



Fields 42.9 60.3 69.8 

Forests 11.2 9.7 7.9 

Gardens 1.2 2.9 6.2 

Meadows 36.5 20.6 10.2 

Unusable 8.2 6.5 5.9 



TOTAL 100.0 100.0 100.0 



801 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Table 5. Principal Soviet Leaders, 1917-89 



Period 



Leader 



Party Post 



Government Post 



1917-24 Vladimir I. Lenin 



1924-26 Nikolai I. Bukharin 



1926-53 



1953-57 



1957-64 



Lev B. Kamenev 
Joseph V. Stalin 

Leon Trotsky 

Grigorii V. Zinov'ev 
Joseph V. Stalin 



Lavrenty Beria 
(until June 1953) 

Nikolai A. Bulganin 

Nikita S. Khrushchev 



Georgii M. Malenkov 
Viacheslav Molotov 
Nikita S. Khrushchev 



1964-75 Leonid I. Brezhnev 



Aleksei N. Kosygin 



Member of 
Politburo 



-do- 



-do- 

General secretary 
of Central 
Committee 

Member of 
Politburo 



-do- 
General secretary 
of Central 
Committee 

Member of 
Presidium 1 

-do- 
Member of 
Presidium; 
first secretary 
of Central 
Committee 2 

Member of 
Presidium 

-do- 



Member of 
Presidium; 
first secretary 
of Central 
Committee 

Member of Polit- 
buro; general 
secretary of 
Central Com- 
mittee 

Member of 
Politburo 



Chairman of Council 
of People's Com- 
missars 

Member of Council 
of People's Com- 
missars 



Member of Council 
of People's Com- 
missars 



Minister of internal 
affairs 

Minister of defense 



Chairman of Council 
of Ministers 3 

Member of Council 
of Ministers 

Chairman of Council 
of Ministers 



Chairman of Council 
of Ministers 



802 



Appendix A 



Table 5. — Continued 



Period 



Leader 



Party Post 



Government Post 



Nikolai V. Podgornyi 



1975-82 Leonid I. Brezhnev 



1982-84 Iurii V. Andropov 

1984-85 Konstantin U. Chernenko 



1985- 



Mikhail S. Gorbachev 



Member of Polit- 
buro; secretary 
of Central 
Committee 

Member of Polit- 
buro; general 
secretary of 
Central Com- 
mittee 

-do- 

-do- 



-do- 



Chairman of Presid- 
ium of Supreme 
Soviet 



Chairman of Presid- 
ium of Supreme 
Soviet 

-do- 4 



— means no position in the government. 

1 The Politburo was renamed the Presidium in 1952; in 1966 the name reverted to Politburo. 

2 The title general secretary was used until Stalin's death in 1953, after which the title was changed 
to first secretary. In 1966 the title reverted to general secretary. 

3 In 1946 the Council of People's Commissars was renamed the Council of Ministers. 

4 In 1989 Gorbachev was named chairman of the Supreme Soviet by the Congress of People's Deputies. 
The newly created position superseded that of chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. 



803 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Table 6. Area, Population, and Capitals 
of the Republics, 1989 Census 





Area of Republic 1 


Population 




Population 


Republic 


(in square kilometers) 


of Republic 1 


Capital 


of Capital 2 




17,075,400 


145,311,000 


Moscow 


8,815,000 




2,717,300 


16,244,000 


Alma-Ata 


1,108,000 


Ukrainian 


603,700 


51,201,000 


Kiev 


2,544,000 


Turkmen 


488,100 


3,361,000 


Ashkhabad 


382,000 


Uzbek 


447,400 


19,026,000 


Tashkent 


2,124,000 


Belorussian 


207,600 


10,078,000 


Minsk 


1,543,000 




198,500 


4,143,000 


Frunze 


632,000 


Tadzhik 


143,100 


4,807,000 


Dushanbe 


582,000 


Azerbaydzhan . . . 


86,600 


6,811,000 


Baku 


1,115,000 




69,700 


5,266,000 


Tbilisi 


1,194,000 




65,200 


3,641,000 


Vilnius 


566,000 




64,500 


2,647,000 


Riga 


900,000 




45,100 


1,556,000 


Tallin 


478,000 


Moldavian 


33,700 


4,185,000 


Kishinev 


663,000 


Armenian 


29,800 


3,412,000 


Yerevan 


1,168,000 


TOTAL 


22,403,000 3 


286,717,000 * 




24,008,000 



1 Estimated. 

2 Estimated. Each republic's capital is also the largest city in the republic. 

3 Includes the area of the White Sea and the Sea of Azov. 

4 Soviet citizens outside the Soviet Union are included, and hence the total differs from that given on 
tables 13 and 15. Further, Soviet statistics sometimes have unexplained discrepancies. 

Source: Based on information from Izvestiia [Moscow], April 29, 1989, 1-2. 



Table 7. Natural Resource Potential by Region, 1986 1 
(in percentages) 



Region 


Fuel and 
Energy 


Minerals 


Wood 


Farmland 


Total 


Northern and central belt of 














9.2 


8.9 


18.2 


63.7 


100.0 




26.2 


7.4 


0.5 


65.5 


100.0 2 


Volga-Ural region 


39.2 


4.1 


5.9 


50.8 


100.0 


Siberia and the Soviet Far East . . 


. 66.0 


6.9 


11.3 


15.8 


100.0 




. 17.6 


14.9 


0.2 


67.3 


100.0 




36.2 


2.2 




61.6 


100.0 


SOVIET UNION 


. 38.5 


7.5 


6.0 


48.0 


100.0 



— means negligible. 

1 The potential of a natural resource is affected by the cost effectiveness of its exploitation. Hence, some 
resources, although abundant, may be too costly to extract and transport to locations of refinement 
and use. 

2 As published. 



Source: Based on information from V. Rom (ed.), Ekonomicheskaia i sotsial'naia geogrqfiia 
SSSR, 1, Moscow, 1986, 128. 



804 



Appendix A 



Table 8. Vital Statistics, Selected Years, 1959-86 



Birth Rate 

Distribution by Sex and Death Rate Life Expectancy 





Population 


(in p 


ercentages) 


(per 


thousar 






(in years) 


Year 


(in thousands) 


Male 


Female 


Births 


Deaths 


Net 


Male 


Female Average 


1959 . . 


. 208,827 


45 


55 


25.0 


7.6 


17.4 


64 


72 69 


1970 . . 


. 241,720 


46 


54 


17.4 


8.2 


9.2 


65 


74 70 


1981 . . 


. 266,600 


47 


53 


18.5 


10.2 


8.3 


63 


73 68 


1986 . . 


. 278,800 


47 


53 


20.0 


9.8 


10.2 


65 


74 70 



Table 9. Population Distribution by Sex, 
Selected Years, 1913-87 



Population Distribution 

(in millions) (in percentages) 

Year Male Female Total Male Female Total 



1913 1 79 80 159 50 50 100 

1959 2 94 115 209 45 55 100 

1970 2 Ill 131 242 46 54 100 

1979 2 122 140 262 47 53 100 

1987 1 133 149 282 47 53 100 



1 Estimated figures. 

2 Census figures. 

Source: Based on information from J. P. Cole, Geography of the Soviet Union, Cambridge, 
1984, 248; and Gosudarstvennyi komitet po statistike, Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR v 
1987 g., Moscow, 1988, 347. 



Table 10. Population Distribution by Urban-Rural Breakdown, 
Selected Years, 1940-87 



Population Distribution 

(in millions) (in percentages) 

Year Urban Rural Total Urban Rural Total 



1940 1 63 131 194 33 67 100 

1950 1 69 110 179 39 61 100 

1959 2 100 109 209 48 52 100 

1970 2 136 106 242 56 44 100 

1975 1 154 100 254 61 39 100 

1979 2 164 98 262 62 38 100 

1983 1 174 96 270 64 36 100 

1987 1 186 96 282 66 34 100 



1 Estimated figures 

2 Census figures. 



805 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Table 11. Cities with Populations over One Million, 1989 
(in thousands) 



City 



Population 



City 



Population 



Moscow . . 
Leningrad 

Kiev 

Tashkent . 
Khar'kov . 
Minsk . . . 
Gor'kiy . . 
Novosibirsk 
Sverdlovsk 
Tbilisi . . . 
Kuybyshev 
Yerevan . . 



8,769 
4,456 
2,587 
2,073 
1,611 
1,589 
1,438 
1,436 
1,367 
1,260 
1,257 
1,199 



Dnepropetrovsk 

Baku 

Omsk 

Chelyabinsk . . . 

Alma-Ata 

Odessa 

Donetsk 

Kazan' 

Perm' 

Ufa 

Rostov-na-Donu 



1,179 
1,150 
1,148 
1,143 
1,128 
1,115 
1,110 
1,094 
1,091 
1,083 
1,020 



Source: Based on information from Izvestiia [Moscow], April 29, 1989, 2. 



Table 12. Population Density of the Republics, 1959 and 1982 



Number of Persons 
(per square kilometer) Percentage 



Republic 1959 1 1982 2 Change 



Moldavian 85.6 119.4 39.4 

Armenian 59.2 106.4 79.7 

Ukrainian 69.4 83.3 20.0 

Georgian 58.0 73.2 26.2 

Azerbaydzhan 42.7 72.8 70.4 

Lithuanian 41.6 53.3 28.1 

Belorussian 38.8 46.9 20.8 

Latvian 32.9 40.1 21.8 

Uzbek 18.4 37.1 101.6 

Estonian 26.5 33.2 25.2 

Tadzhik 13.8 28.8 108.6 

Kirgiz 10.4 18.8 80.7 

Russian 6.9 8.2 18.8 

Turkmen 3.1 6.1 96.7 

Kazakh 3.4 5.6 64.7 

SOVIET UNION 9.3 12.1 30.1 



1 Census figures. 

2 Estimated figures. 

Source: Based on information from "Chislennost' naseleniia, ego rost i razmeshchenie," 
in L.M. Volodarskii (ed.), Naselenie SSSR, Moscow, 1983, 15. 



806 



Appendix A 

Table 13. Nationality, Language, and Religion, 1989 Census 1 



National 

Language Percentage 

Is Native Fluent in 

Population Language Russian Religion 



Nationality and 
Language 

Nationalities listed in 1979 census 



Russian 145,071,550 

Ukrainian 44,135,989 

Uzbek 16,686,240 

Belorussian 10,030,441 

Kazakh 8,137,878 

Azerbaydzhan 6,791,106 

Tatar 6,645,588 

Armenian 4,627,227 

Tadzhik 4,216,693 

Georgian 3,983,115 

Moldavian 3,355,240 

Lithuanian 3,068,296 

Turkmen 2,718,297 

Kirgiz 2,530,998 

German 2,035,807 

Chuvash 1,839,228 

Latvian 1,459,156 

Bashkir 1,449,462 

Jewish 1,376,910 

Mordvin 1,153,516 

Polish 1,126,137 

Estonian 1,027,255 

Chechen 958,309 

Udmurt 746,562 

Mari 670,277 

Avar 604,202 

Ossetian 597,802 

Lezgin 466,833 

Korean 437,335 

Karakalpak 423,436 

Buryat 421,682 

Kabardin 394,651 

Yakut 382,255 

Bulgarian 378,790 

Dargin 365,797 

Greek 357,975 

Komi 345,007 

Kumyk 282,178 

Uygur 262,199 

Gypsy 261,956 

Ingush 237,577 

Turkish 207,369 

Tuvinian 206,924 

Gagauz 197,164 

Kalmyk 174,528 

Hungarian 171,941 

Karachai 156,140 

Kurdish 152,952 

Komi-Permyak 152,074 



99.8 


100.0 


Orthodox 


81.1 


56.2 


Orthodox, Uniate 


98.3 


23.8 


Muslim 


70.9 


54.7 


Orthodox, Catholic 


97.0 


60.4 


Muslim 


97.6 


34.4 


Muslim 


83.2 


70.8 


Muslim 


91.6 


47.1 


Orthodox 


97.7 


27.7 


Muslim 


98.2 


33.1 


Orthodox 


91.6 


53.8 


Orthodox 


97.7 


37.9 


Catholic 


98.5 


27.8 


Muslim 


97.8 


35.2 


Muslim 


48.7 


45.0 


Lutheran, Catholic 


76.5 


65.1 


Orthodox, Muslim 


94.8 


64.4 


Lutheran 


72.3 


71.8 


Muslim 


11.1 


10.1 


Jewish 


67.0 


62.5 


Orthodox 


30.4 


43.9 


Catholic 


95.5 


33.8 


Lutheran 


98.0 


74.0 


Muslim 


69.6 


61.3 


Orthodox 


80.8 


68.8 


Orthodox 


96.9 


60.6 


Muslim 


87.0 


68.9 


Muslim, Orthodox 


91.5 


53.4 


Muslim 


49.4 


43.3 


Shamanist, Confucian 


94.1 


20.7 


Muslim 


86.3 


72.0 


Orthodox, Shamanist, 






Buddhist 


96.9 


77.1 


Muslim 


93.8 


54.9 


Orthodox 


67.9 


60.3 


Orthodox 


97.5 


68.0 


Muslim 


44.5 


39.5 


Orthodox 


70.4 


62.1 


Orthodox 


97.4 


74.5 


Muslim 


86.5 


58.3 


Muslim 


77.4 


63.3 


Orthodox, Muslim 


96.9 


80.0 


Muslim 


91.0 


40.2 


Muslim 


98.5 


59.1 


Lamaist 


87.4 


71.7 


Orthodox 


89.9 


85.1 


Buddhist 


93.7 


43.3 


Catholic 


96.7 


79.1 


Muslim 


80.5 


28.5 


Muslim 


70.1 


61.2 


Orthodox 



807 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Table 13. — Continued 







National 








Language 


Percentage 


Nationality and 




Is Native 


Fluent in 


Language 


Population 


Language 


Russian Religion 



Romanian 145,918 

Karelian 131,357 

Adygy 124,941 

Lak 118,386 

Abkhazian 102,938 

Tabasaran 98,448 

Balkar 88,771 

Khakass 81,428 

Nogai 75,564 

Altai 71,317 

Dungan 69,686 

Finnish 67,318 

Circassian 52,356 

Iranian 40,510 

Abazinian 33,801 

Tat 30,817 

Baluchi 29,091 

Assyrian 26,289 

Rutul 20,672 

Tsakhur 20,055 

Agul 19,936 

Shor 16,572 

Czech 16,335 

Vep 13,341 

Slovak 10,017 

Udin 8,849 

Mongol 4,336 

Karaim 2,803 

Izhor 829 

Peoples of the North 2 . 197,345 

Subtotal 285,200,070 

Nationalities not listed in 
1979 census but listed in 
1989 census 

Crimean Tatar 268,739 

Central Asian Jewish . . 36,568 

Talysh 21,914 

Mountain Jewish 19,516 

Vietnamese 16,752 

Georgian Jewish 16,123 

Arab 11,599 

Chinese 11,418 

Afghan 8,951 

Cuban 5,113 

Albanian 4,085 

Spanish 3,737 

Serbian 3,100 

Indian and Pakistani . . 2,614 

Italian 1,942 

Crimean 1,559 



60.9 


50.9 


Orthodox 


47.9 


45.5 


Orthodox 


94.7 


81.7 


Muslim 


93.5 


76.4 


Muslim 


93.3 


78.2 


Muslim, Orthodox 


95.7 


62.6 


Muslim 


92.9 


77.2 


Muslim 


76.1 


66.6 


Orthodox 


89.9 


79.3 


Muslim 


84.4 


65.2 


Orthodox 


94.7 


70.5 


Muslim 


34.7 


35.4 


Lutheran 


90.4 


76.3 


Muslim 


33.4 


45.9 


Muslim 


93.4 


78.1 


Muslim 


71.8 


64.0 


Muslim 


95.7 


5.0 


Muslim 


59.7 


43.6 


Nestorian 


94.5 


63.0 


Muslim 


95.1 


23.6 


Muslim 


94.4 


65.8 


Muslim 


57.7 


52.8 


Orthodox 


36.0 


37.3 


Catholic 


52.6 


49.2 


Orthodox 


42.7 


51.8 


Catholic 


85.3 


49.4 


Orthodox 


90.8 


74.5 


Buddhist, Shamanist 


25.1 


18.7 


Jewish 


36.9 


38.0 


Orthodox 


52.8 


49.5 


n.a. 



92.5 


76.0 


n.a. 


64.6 


50.2 


n.a. 


90.1 


6.1 


n.a. 


73.2 


53.1 


n.a. 


98.5 


25.0 


n.a. 


90.7 


46.4 


n.a. 


72.4 


63.5 


n.a. 


33.0 


30.6 


n.a. 


65.4 


35.7 


n.a. 


73.3 


73.1 


n.a. 


52.0 


49.2 


n.a. 


48.7 


43.5 


n.a. 


40.6 


50.2 


n.a. 


77.1 


40.7 


n.a. 


40.4 


28.4 


n.a. 


38.4 


32.9 


n.a. 



808 



Table 13. — Continued 



Appendix A 



National 

Language Percentage 

Nationality and Is Native Fluent in 

Language Population Language Russian Religion 



Croatian 1,100 59.3 47.7 

Dutch 964 35.1 32.7 

French 798 50.3 44.4 

American 746 61.3 39.5 

Austrian 731 45.7 30.2 

Japanese 691 45.9 38.6 

British 637 70.0 50.2 

Subtotal 439,397 

TOTAL 3 285,639,467 



n.a. — not available. 

1 The population figures given here do not include Soviet citizens abroad at the time the census was 
taken. Including them, the total Soviet population in 1989 was 286.7 million, which is the figure used 
on Table 6. It should be noted that Soviet statistics sometimes have unexplained discrepancies. 

2 In the 1979 census, twenty-three nationalities of the North were listed individually. 

3 Preliminary. 

Source: Based on information from Gosudarstvennyi komitet po statistike, Natsionalnyi sostav 
naseleniia, Chast' II, Moscow, 1989, 3-5. 



809 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Table 14. Autonomous Subdivisions, 1989 * 



Autonomous Republic 



Autonomous Oblast 



Autonomous Okrug 



Nakhichevan' 



Abkhazian 
Adzhar 



Bashkir 
Buryat 

Chechen-Ingush 

Chuvash 

Dagestan 

Kabardino-Balkar 

Kalmyk 

Karelian 

Komi 

Mari 

Mordvinian 

North Ossetian 

Tatar 

Tuva 

Udmurt 

Yakut 



Azerbaydzhan Republic 

Nagorno-Karabakh 
Georgian Republic 

South Ossetian 

Russian Republic 

Adyegai 

Gorno-Altai 

Jewish (Yevreyskaya) 

Karachi-C ircassian 

Khakass 



Agin-Buryat 

Chukotskii 

Evenk 

Khanty-Mansiiskii 

Komi-Permyak 

Koryak 

Nenet 

Taimyr 

Ust'-Ordyn Buryat 
Yamalo-Nenet 



Karakalpak 



Tadzhik Republic 

Gorno-Badakhshan 
Uzbek Republic 



* For an explanation of the three kinds of autonomous subdivisions — see Glossary. The Armenian, 
Belorussian, Estonian, Kazakh, Kirgiz, Latvian, Lithuanian, Moldavian, Turkmen, and Ukrainian 
republics had no autonomous subdivisions. 

Source: Based on information from Richard Sakwa, Soviet Politics, London, 1989, 298. 



810 



Appendix A 



Table 15. Republic of Residence and Population 
of Major Nationalities, 1989 Census 



Nationality Population 

Republic of Residence Number Percentage 1 



Russians 

Russian 119,807,165 82.6 

Ukrainian 11,340,250 7.8 

Kazakh 6,226,400 4.3 

Uzbek 1,652,179 1.1 

Belorussian 1,341,055 0.9 

Kirgiz 916,543 0.6 

Latvian 905,515 0.6 

Moldavian 560,423 0.4 

Estonian 474,815 0.3 

Azerbaydzhan 392,303 0.3 

Tadzhik 386,630 0.3 

Lithuanian 343,597 0.2 

Georgian 338,645 0.2 

Turkmen 334,477 0.2 

Armenian 51,553 0.04 

Total Russians 145,071,550 100.0 

Ukrainians 

Ukrainian 37,370,368 84.7 

Russian 4,363,992 9.9 

Kazakh 895,964 2.0 

Moldavian 599,777 1.4 

Belorussian 290,368 0.7 

Uzbek 154,105 0.3 

Kirgiz 108,027 0.2 

Latvian 92,101 0.2 

Georgian 51,472 0.1 

Estonian 48,273 0.1 

Lithuanian 44,397 0.1 

Tadzhik 40,646 0.09 

Turkmen 35,814 0.08 

Azerbaydzhan 32,344 0.07 

Armenian 8,341 0.02 

Total Ukrainians 44,135,989 100.0 

Uzbeks 

Uzbek 14,123,626 84.6 

Tadzhik 1,197,091 7.2 

Kirgiz 550,095 3.3 

Kazakh 332,016 2.0 

Turkmen 317,252 1.9 

Russian 127,169 0.8 

Ukrainian 27,753 0.2 

Belorussian 3,550 0.02 

Moldavian 2,018 0.01 

Lithuanian 1,452 0.01 

Azerbaydzhan 1,379 0.01 

Georgian 1,073 0.006 

Latvian 925 0.006 

Estonian 595 0.004 

Armenian 246 0.001 

Total Uzbeks 16,686,240 100.0 



811 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Table 15. — Continued 



Nationality 

Republic of Residence 



Population 



Number 



Percentage 



Belorussians 

Belorussian 

Russian 

Ukrainian 

Kazakh 

Latvian 

Lithuanian 

Uzbek 

Estonian 

Moldavian 

Turkmen 

Kirgiz 

Georgian 

Azerbaydzhan 

Tadzhik 

Armenian 

Total Belorussians . . 

Kazakhs 

Kazakh 

Uzbek 

Russian 

Turkmen 

Kirgiz 

Ukrainian 

Tadzhik 

Belorussian 

Georgian 

Moldavian 

Azerbaydzhan 

Latvian 

Lithuanian 

Armenian 

Estonian 

Total Kazakhs 

Azerbaydzhanis 

Azerbaydzhan 

Russian 

Georgian 

Kazakh 

Armenian 

Ukrainian 

Uzbek 

Turkmen 

Kirgiz 

Belorussian 

Tadzhik 

Latvian 

Moldavian 

Lithuanian 

Estonian 

Total Azerbaydzhanis 



7,897,781 
1,205,887 
439,858 
182,514 
119,702 
63,076 
31,737 
27,711 
19,431 
9,285 
9,187 
8,338 
7,833 
7,042 
1,059 
10,030,441 



6,531,921 
808,090 
636,083 
87,595 
37,318 
12,120 
11,371 
4,530 
2,545 
1,933 
1,638 
1,044 
658 



424 



8,137,878 

5,800,994 
336,908 
307,424 
90,082 
84,860 
59,149 
44,393 
33,334 
15,775 
6,634 
3,689 
2,765 
2,554 
1,307 
1,238 
6,791,106 



78.7 
12.0 
4.4 
1.8 
1.2 
0.6 
0.3 
0.3 
0.2 
0.1 
0.1 
0.09 
0.08 
0.07 
0.01 
100.0 

80.3 
9.9 
7.8 
1.1 
0.5 
0.1 
0.1 
0.06 
0.03 
0.02 
0.02 
0.01 
0.01 
0.007 
0.005 
100.0 

85.4 
5.0 
4.5 
1.3 
1.2 
0.9 
0.7 
0.5 
0.2 
0.1 
0.05 
0.04 
0.04 
0.02 
0.02 
100.0 



812 



Appendix A 



Table 15. — Continued 



Nationality 



Republic of Residence 


Number 


Percentage 


1 stars 








=i Q 60=1 


A3 1 






7 ft 




397 871 


4 Q 


Ukrainian 


86 789 


1.3 




72 168 






70 068 


1 1 




39,243 


0.6 




28,019 


0.4 




12,352 


0.2 




5,107 


0.1 




4,828 


0.1 




4,058 


0.1 




3,999 


0.1 


Moldavian 


3,335 


0.05 




470 


0.007 




6,645,588 


100.0 


ill liiviiiaiij 






A i'i n pniQn 


3 0R1 Q90 


66.6 


Russian 


532 675 


11.5 




436 615 


9.4 


A 7 prnav ri 7n s n 


390 495 


8.4 


T TVr'mni an 


60 047 


1.3 






1 . 1 


Turkmen 


31,838 


0.7 


Kazakh 


19,105 


0.4 




5,630 


0.1 




5,251 


0.1 




3,975 


0.1 




3,069 


0.07 




2,774 


0.06 




1,669 


0.04 




1,648 


0.04 




4,627,227 


100.0 


Tadzhiks 






'la ri 7niV 


3 168 193 


75.1 


Uzbek 


931 547 


22.1 




38 327 


0.9 




33 842 


0.8 




25 514 


0.6 




10 476 


0.3 


Turkmen 


3 418 


0.08 




1,417 


0.03 




1,133 


0.03 




720 - . . 


0.02 




702 


0.02 




516 


0.01 




432 


0.01 




343 


0.008 




113 


0.003 




4,216,693 


100.0 



813 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Table 15. — Continued 



Nationality 

Republic of Residence 



Population 



Number 



Percentage 



Georgians 

Georgian 

Russian 

Ukrainian 

Azerbaydzhan 

Kazakh 

Uzbek 

Belorussian 

Latvian 

Armenian 

Kirgiz 

Moldavian 

Tadzhik 

Turkmen 

Lithuanian 

Estonian 

Total Georgians 

Moldavians 

Moldavian 

Ukrainian 

Russian 

Kazakh 

Uzbek 

Belorussian 

Latvian 

Georgian 

Turkmen 

Azerbaydzhan .... 

Kirgiz 

Tadzhik 

Lithuanian 

Estonian 

Armenian 

Total Moldavians 

Lithuanians 

Lithuanian 

Russian 

Latvian 

Ukrainian 

Kazakh 

Belorussian 

Estonian 

Uzbek 

Moldavian 

Georgian 

Azerbaydzhan .... 

Tadzhik 

Kirgiz 

Turkmen 

Armenian 

Total Lithuanians 



3,789,385 
130,719 
23,689 
13,986 
9,496 
4,726 
2,968 
1,378 
1,364 
1,143 
1,077 
971 
960 
647 
606 
3,983,115 

2,790,769 
324,480 
172,784 
33,096 
11,424 
5,348 
3,223 
2,814 
2,678 
1,915 
1,875 
1,646 
1,448 
1,215 
525 
3,355,240 



2,924,048 
70,386 
34,630 
11,385 
10,938 
7,589 
2,568 
2,234 
1,438 
921 
533 
530 
493 
372 
231 

3,068,296 



95.1 
3.3 
0.6 
0.4 
0.2 
0.1 
0.07 
0.03 
0.03 
0.03 
0.03 
0.02 
0.02 
0.02 
0.02 
100.0 

83.2 
9.7 
5.1 
1.0 
0.3 
0.2 
0.1 
0.1 
0.08 
0.06 
0.06 
0.05 
0.04 
0.04 
0.02 
100.0 

95.3 
2.3 
1.1 
0.4 
0.4 
0.3 
0.1 
0.07 
0.05 
0.03 
0.02 
0.02 
0.02 
0.01 
0.008 
100.0 



814 



Appendix A 



Table 15. — Continued 



Nationality Population 

Republic of Residence Number Percentage 1 



Turkmens 

Turkmen 2,524,138 92.9 

Uzbek 122,566 4.5 

Russian 39,738 1.5 

Tadzhik 20,527 0.8 

Kazakh .. 4,046 0.1 

Ukrainian 3,990 0.1 

Kirgiz 899 0.03 

Belorussian 755 0.03 

Moldavian 399 0.01 

Azerbaydzhan 340 0.01 

Georgian 305 0.01 

Latvian 228 0.008 

Lithuanian 193 0.007 

Estonian 106 0.004 

Armenian 67 0.002 

Total Turkmens 2,718,297 100.0 

Kirgiz 

Kirgiz 2,228,482 88.0 

Uzbek 174,899 6.9 

Tadzhik 63,831 2.5 

Russian 43,083 1.7 

Kazakh 14,271 0.6 

Ukrainian 3,881 0.2 

Turkmen 727 0.03 

Belorussian 555 0.02 

Armenian 271 0.01 

Azerbaydzhan 224 0.01 

Moldavian 216 0.01 

Latvian 189 0.01 

Georgian 170 0.007 

Lithuanian 118 0.005 

Estonian 81 0.003 

Total Kirgiz 2,530,998 100.0 

Germans 

Kazakh 956,235 47.0 

Russian 840,980 41.3 

Kirgiz 101,198 5.0 

Tadzhik 32,493 1.6 

Other 104,901 5.1 

Total Germans 2,035,807 100.0 

Chuvash 

Russian 1,771,047 93.8 

Other 68,181 6.2 

Total Chuvash 1,839,228 100.0 

Latvians 

Latvian 1,387,646 95.1 

Russian 46,818 3.2 

Ukrainian 7,169 0.5 

Lithuanian 4,228 0.3 

Kazakh 3,370 0.2 



815 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 
Table 15. — Continued 



Nationality Population 

Republic of Residence Number Percentage 1 



Latvians — Continued 

Estonian 3,135 0.2 

Belorussian 2,655 0.2 

Uzbek 1,130 0.1 

Turkmen 859 0.06 

Georgian 524 0.04 

Moldavian 461 0.03 

Kirgiz 392 0.03 

Azerbaydzhan 324 0.02 

Tadzhik 300 0.02 

Armenian 145 0.01 

Total Latvians 1,459,156 100.0 

Bashkirs 

Russian 1,345,231 92.8 

Other 104,231 7.2 

Total Bashkirs 1,449,462 100.0 

Jews 

Russian 536,422 39.0 

Ukrainian 485,975 35.3 

Belorussian 111,789 8.1 

Moldavian 65,668 4.8 

Uzbek 65,369 4.7 

Azerbaydzhan 25,190 1.8 

Latvian 22,897 1.7 

Kazakh 18,379 1.3 

Lithuanian 12,312 0.9 

Georgian 10,302 0.7 

Tadzhik 9,576 0.7 

Other 13,031 1.0 

Total Jews 1,376,910 100.0 

Mordvins 

Russian 1,072,517 93.0 

Other 80,999 7.0 

Total Mordvins 1,153,516 100.0 

Poles 

Belorussian 417,648 37.1 

Lithuanian 257,988 22.9 

Ukrainian 218,891 19.4 

Latvian 60,388 5.4 

Other 171,222 15.2 

Total Poles 1,126,137 100.0 

Estonians 

Estonian 963,269 93.8 

Russian 46,358 4.5 

Ukrainian 4,208 0.4 

Kazakh 3,397 0.3 

Latvian 3,312 0.3 

Georgian 2,312 0.1 

Uzbek 948 0.1 

Belorussian 797 0.1 

Lithuanian 598 0.06 



816 



Appendix A 



Table 15. — Continued 



Nationality Population 

Republic of Residence Number Percentage 1 



Estonians — Continued 





560 


0.05 




430 


0.04 




324 


0.03 




295 


0.03 




276 


0.03 




171 


0.02 




1,027,255 


100.0 


Other 


12,173,338 





TOTAL 285,639,467 * 

1 Figures may not add to total because of rounding. 

2 Soviet citizens outside the country are not included. Also, Soviet statistics sometimes have unexplained 
discrepancies. 

Source: Based on information from Gosudarstvennyi komitet po statistike, Natsionalnyi sos- 
tav naseleniia, Chast' II, Moscow, 1989, 97-113. 



817 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



01 t^- co m oi MnNnomNN 
CMr-^r^-<t i ^en"<fcr>int£>uDcr>mtO'0 



^ 00 Oi M ffl 



CD CM CM 



tO lO 



^. m ^ rt 



00 O 

io n m in en en" cm «" 



CM 


in 


en 


o> 




CM 




in 


oq en 


CM 


CO 


en 


°1 


CM 


in 

CO 


in 


oS 


en 


■* 


to 




CO 


—H CM 


CM 


6 


CM 


5 


in 

en 



*NNONcoio^mNnMfl«oi 
O "* co cm co >* <* en o> CO to in en 

r>T o" co" of * cm" co" •*" ©" »-T of of en" i»T o" 
t^inencMOeno^entoint^r^en'-^in 
eo^coiom*m* * eo o « >n 



mocncMcotoentntO'+'O^mmoen 



inoo^moenmocnr^cnr^eninm 



to 


m 

CM 


r~ 


m 
O 




O 
CO 


o 

en 


CM 

m 
<o 


en 


tO 

CM 
CM 


of 








to" 



00 tO 

en co 
en en 



m o * id m * 
* io cn - o n 
m m m oi Oi * 



m 


to 


en 


CO 


r-- 


to 


CM 


CM 


en 


to 


CO 


CM 

r- 






en 


CM 
CO 


b 


CM 
<0 


en 
oi 





* -i N CM « 

(OMnmto 



m 


CO 


<o 








m 


en 


o 


5 


OI 


CO 


CM 


to 


Oi 


to 


<o 


CM 


CO 


CM 


CTi 


CO 


Oi 


CM 




to 


en 


CO 


-* 


<0 




en 






Cr l 


o> 


cn^ 




°l 


o 






* 


to_ 


CM 


t>T 


o" 


en 


r>T 




©" 


of 


co" 




T^" 


o" 


rh* 


co" 


r»" 


en 


o 




CM 


Oi 


en 


o 


CO 


<o 


CO 


CM 


Oi 


CM 


CM 


CO 


<o 


CO 


en 




» 


m 


e» 






© 


°l 




m 


CM 


en 


Ol 


of 


r»" 






to" 


m" 


en 


en" 


en" 


cm" 


cm" 


cm" 


cm" 








en 





























.£2 

S ed «j 

3 -* N 

* ID D 



C 

eti 

« ' : c S c 

8 js >r I •§ 3 > « 

£- e<3 U N 2 3 T3 ^ 

n u pTJ 3 i; 



c 

N CCJ 

'5b*> 



"jj W N « fj U i 3 5 



818 



Appendix A 



Table 17. Social Groups, 1913, 1959, and 1986 
(in percentages) 



Social Group 1913 1959 1986 



Peasants 66.7 31.7 12.1 

Workers 14.6 50.2 61.7 

Intelligentsia 1 2.4 18.1 26.2 

Bourgeoisie 2 16.3 n.a. n.a. 

TOTAL 100.0 100.0 100.0 



n.a. — not applicable. 

1 Although officially not considered a separate class, the intelligentsia made up a considerable part of 
the population. 

2 After the Bolshevik Revolution, the designation bourgeoisie was abolished as a social class by the regime. 

Source: Based on information from Tsentral'noe statisticheskoe upravlenie, SSSR v tsifrakh 
v 1986 godu, Moscow, 1987, 6. 



Table 18. Average Monthly Wage by Occupation, 1986 
(in rubles) 1 



Occupation Wage 2 



Blue-collar workers 

Industrial workers 216.4 

Railroad workers 220.9 

Construction workers 253.2 

Water transport workers 272.4 

White-collar workers 

Teachers 155.7 

Computer scientists 158.0 

Communications workers 164.0 

Government workers 176.6 

Scientists 208.2 

Engineers and technicians 239.0 



1 For value of the ruble — see Glossary. 

2 Nationwide average was 195.6 rubles. 

Source: Based on information from Gosudarstvennyi komitet po statistike, Narodnoe khozi- 
aistvo SSSR za 70 let, Moscow, 1987, 431. 



819 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Table 19. Selected Low-Paid Occupations, Early 1980s 
(in rubles) 1 



Occupation Wage 2 



Librarians 100-115 

Translators 95-130 

Cultural administrators 90-110 

Musicians 90-110 

Secretaries (senior) 80-85 

Cashiers 80-85 

Draftsmen 80-85 

Warehouse personnel 80-85 

Stove keepers 80-85 

Truck and bus drivers 75-90 

Grounds keepers 75-85 

Street cleaners 75-80 

Guards 75-80 

Clerks (junior) 75-80 



1 For value of the ruble — see Glossary. 

2 Average wage increased nearly 16 percent from 1980 to 1988. 

Source: Based on information from Mervyn Matthews, "Aspects of Poverty in the Soviet 
Union," in Horst Herlemann (ed.), Quality of Life in the Soviet Union, Boulder, 
Colorado, 1987, 48, 51. 



Table 20. Urban-Rural Breakdown, Selected Years, 1917-87 
(in percentages) 



Year 



Urban 



Rural 



Total 



1917 
1940 
1959 
1970 
1987 



17.9 
32.5 
47.9 
56.3 
66.0 



82.1 
67.5 
52.1 
43.7 
34.0 



100.0 
100.0 
100.0 
100.0 
100.0 



Source: Based on information from Tsentral'noe statisticheskoe upravlenie, SSSR v tsifrakh v 
1986 godu, Moscow, 1987, 5. 



820 



Appendix A 

Table 21. Average Family Size by Nationality 
Group, 1979 Census * 



Nationality Group Urban Rural Average 



Slavs 

Russians 3.2 3.2 3.2 

Ukrainians 3.2 3.3 3.2 

Belorussians 3.2 3.2 3.2 

Baltic peoples 

Lithuanians 3.3 3.3 3.3 

Latvians 3.0 3.1 3.0 

Estonians 3.0 3.1 3.0 

Peoples of the Caucasus 

Armenians 4.3 4.8 4.5 

Georgians 3.9 4.1 4.0 

Azerbaydzhanis 4.3 4.8 4.5 

Central Asians 

Uzbeks 5.8 6.3 6.2 

Kazakhs 5.1 5.7 5.5 

Kirgiz 4.9 5.8 5.7 

Tadzhiks 6.0 6.7 6.5 

Turkmens 5.9 6.5 6.3 

Other 

Moldavians 3.3 3.6 3.5 

SOVIET UNION 3.3 3.8 3.5 



* Includes only families in which all members belong to one nationality. 

Source: Based on information from Tsentral'noe statisticheskoe upravlenie, Chislennost' i 
sostav naseleniia SSSR, Moscow, 1984, 284-37. 



821 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Table 22. Network of Primary Party Organizations, 
1977 and 1987 



Location of Primary Party 1977 2 1987 2 

Organization 1 Number Percentage Number Percentage 



Industry, transportation, communica- 


102,720 


26.1 


112,866 


25.5 


Schools, cultural organizations, and 
health organizations 


96,051 


24.4 


104,988 


23.8 


Rural territorial, housing sectors, 


0/,oOJ 


1 1 .1 


ol,ooo 


1 O K 

lo. J 


Institutions, organizations, and eco- 
nomic organs (from the central to 


65,458 


16.6 


76,684 


17.4 




27,893 


7.1 


26,888 


6.1 




19,400 


4.9 


22,854 


5.2 


Trade and supply 


14,639 


3.7 


15,933 


3.6 


TOTAL 3 


394,014 


100.0 


441,851 


100.0 


1 Table does not include a formal designation for location of primary party organizations i 


n the Soviet 



military. 

2 Figures are for January 1 of each year. 

3 Figures may not add to total because of rounding. 

Source: Based on information from "KPSS v tsifrakh," Partiinaia zhizn ' [Moscow], No. 21 , 
November 1987, 15. 



Table 23. Membership in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 
Selected Years, 1971-87 







Candidate 




Year 


Full Members 


Members 


Total 


1971 (Twenty-Fourth Party Congress) . . 


. . 13,810,089 


645,232 


14,455,321 


1976 (Twenty-Fifth Party Congress) .... 


15,058,017 


636,170 


15,694,187 


1981 (Twenty-Sixth Party Congress) .... 


. . 16,763,009 


717,759 


17,480,768 


1986 (Twenty- Seventh Party Congress) . . 


18,309,693 


728,253 


19,037,946 


1987 (As of July 1) 


18,707,341 


704,812 


19,412,153 



Source: Based on information from "KPSS v tsifrakh," Partiinaia zhizn' [Moscow], No. 
14, July 1986, 19; and "KPSS v tsifrakh," Partiinaia zhizn' [Moscow], No. 21, 
November 1987, 6. 



822 



Appendix A 



o o o o o 



en en oo m 

io Ol « N rt 

oo * n n 

of oo" o" rC 

n m m o (D 

CO O CM 

<* m" r>T ch oC 



CO lO 00 CM 



«5 



CM 



1 
I 

-So 
Co 



r-^ to co en 
(O rv M * 

t^. TjH (£) 

en" oT t>T -<*r 
* m n o oi 

VO CM CM 

to" to" r>T co" oo" 



^_ O) CO CO to 

m co cm T-i 



cn to cm 
co '—i r~» to co 
c» <o t-j ^ 

ctT ct>" co" oo" r-»" 

IO lO (N* * 
"H ^ CM CM CM 

cm" cm" cm" cm" cm" 



« io *om 



CT> CM »-i O) o> 

N m lO N CO 

m m io 

o - ) oT oT « cm" 

m o to m CM 

to in in r-* 

m" to" t> co" co" 



2 tr 
2 5 



> 

oo 
oo 
(X. 

,H oo 
**"■ CTi 

C 

.2 u 

OS Jj 

II 

O _~ 

"O CM 
V 

<Z> • 

PQ Z 



« « iX) In 
r> CO W CO 
d CT) C> O OS 



•81 

1/3 fa 



823 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Table 25. Education Level of Members of the Communist Party 
of the Soviet Union, 1967, 1977, and 1987 

Education 1967 * 1977 * 1987 * 



Level Number Percentage Number Percentage Number Percentage 
Higher 

education .. 2,097,055 16.5 4,008,986 25.1 6,284,588 32.6 

Incomplete 
higher 

education . . 325,985 2.6 380,349 2.4 395,581 2.0 

Secondary 

education .. 3,993,119 31.5 6,268,336 39.2 8,633,322 44.8 

Incomplete 
secondary 

education .. 3,417,251 26.9 3,154,362 19.7 2,520,697 13.1 
Primary 

education 2,850,723 22.5 2,182,443 13.6 1,433,527 7.5 

TOTAL 12,684,133 100.0 15,994,476 100.0 19,267,715 100.0 

* Figures are for January 1 of each year. 

Source: Based on information from "KPSS v tsifrakh," Partiinaia zhizn' [Moscow], No. 21, 
November 1987, 10. 



824 



Appendix A 



Table 26. Distribution of Major Nationalities in the Communist 
Party of the Soviet Union and in the Soviet Population, 1981 





Party 1 




Population 2 


■ 

Nationality 


Number Percentage 


Number 


Percentage 




10,457,771 


60.0 


137,397,000 


52.0 




2,794,592 


16.0 


42,347,000 


16.0 




651,486 


3.7 


9,463,000 


3.0 




393,770 


2.3 


12,456,000 


4.7 




332,821 


1.9 


6,556,000 


2.5 




ono 00*7 


l . / 


5,0/ 1,UUU 


1 .3 




280,498 


1.6 


5,477,000 


2.0 




261,572 


1.5 


4,151,000 


1.5 




126,704 


0.7 


2,851,000 


1.0 




89,680 


0.5 


2,968,000 


1.1 




74,987 


0.4 


2,898,000 


1.1 


Latvians 


71,911 


0.4 


1,439,000 


0.5 




62,694 


0.4 


1,906,000 


0.7 




61,430 


0.4 


2,028,000 


0.7 




55,957 


0.3 


1,020,000 


0.4 


Other 


1,424,313 


8.2 


32,760,000 


11.5 


TOTAL 


17,430,413 


100.0 


269,288,000 


100.0 



'1981 figures. 

2 1979 estimated figures. 

Source: Based on information from "KPSS v tsifrakh," Partiinaia zhizn' [Moscow], No. 14, 
July 1981, 18; and Gosudarstvennyi komitet po statistike, Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR v 
1985 g., Moscow, 1986, 24-26. 



Table 27. Distribution of Members of the Communist Party 
of the Soviet Union by Sex, Selected Years, 1971-87 



Male Female Total 



Year * 


Number 


Percentage 


Number 


Percentage 


Number 


Percentage 


1971 


11,177,007 


77.8 


3,195,566 


22.2 


14,372,563 


100.0 


1976 


11,845,032 


75.7 


3,793,859 


24.3 


15,638,891 


100.0 


1981 


12,814,837 


73.5 


4,615,576 


26.5 


17,430,413 


100.0 


1986 


13,529,233 


71.2 


5,475,145 


28.8 


19,004,378 


100.0 


1987 


. . . 13,631,686 


70.7 


5,636,029 


29.3 


19,267,715 


100.0 



* Figures are for January 1 of each year. 



Source: Based on information from "KPSS v tsifrakh, ' ' Partiinaia zhizn ' [Moscow] , No. 14, 
July 1986, 24; and "KPSS v tsifrakh," Partiinaia zhizn' [Moscow], No. 21, November 
1987, 11. 



825 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Table 28. Organs and Functions of the Soviet Regime, 1988 



Organ 



Function 



Leading Official 



Politburo Makes key decisions on 

national policy and 
leadership 

Secretariat Reviews and certifies 

government plans 
and policies 

Defense Council Formulates defense pol- 

icy and oversees 
defense establishment 



General secretary of the 
Central Committee 1 



-do- 



-do- 



Congress of People's Deputies Perform ceremonial and Chairman of the 
and the Supreme Soviet . . state functions Supreme Soviet 1 

Council of Ministers Coordinates economic Chairman of the Coun- 

administration cil of Ministers 

Gosplan, Ministry of Finance, Perform economic and Ministers and chairmen 
and Goskomstat 2 budgetary planning of state committees 

More than twenty ministries Administer economic -do- 

and committees plans and public 

services 

Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Establish foreign policy -do- 4 

Ministry of Defense, and 
KGB 3 

1 Function is somewhat comparable to that of United States president. 

2 Gosplan — Gosudarstvennyi planovyi komitet (State Planning Committee); Goskomstat — Gosudar- 
stvennyi komitet po statistike (State Committee for Statistics). 

3 KGB — Komitet gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti (Committee for State Security). 

4 Function is comparable to that of United States agency heads. 



826 



Appendix A 



Table 29. Treaties of Friendship and Cooperation with 
Third World Countries, 1989 * 



Country Date 

Mongolia March 12, 1936, in Moscow 

(renewed February 27, 1946; another treaty was 
signed January 15, 1966, in Ulaanbaatar and 
renewed March 15, 1986) 

North Korea July 6, 1961, in Moscow 

Egypt May 27, 1971, in Cairo 

(abrogated March 15, 1976) 

India August 9, 1971, in New Delhi 

Iraq April 9, 1972, in Baghdad 

(renewed April 9, 1987) 

Somalia July 11, 1974, in Mogadishu 

(abrogated November 13, 1977) 

Angola October 8, 1976, in Moscow 

Mozambique March 31, 1977, in Maputo 

Vietnam November 3, 1978, in Moscow 

Ethiopia November 20, 1978, in Moscow 

Afghanistan December 5, 1978, in Moscow 

(previous treaties signed 1921 and 1931) 

South Yemen October 25, 1979, in Moscow 

Syria October 8, 1980, in Moscow 

Congo May 13, 1981, in Moscow 

North Yemen October 9, 1984, in Moscow 

Cuba April 4, 1989, in Havana 



* In addition to these formal treaties, there have been "agreements in principle" or "declarations" 
of friendship and cooperation between the Soviet Union and Libya, Mali, and Benin. The Libya decla- 
ration was announced in a joint communique March 18, 1983, in Moscow following a visit to the 
Soviet Union by Abd as-Salan Jallud, member of the Revolutionary Council of the Socialist People's 
Libyan Arab Jamahiriyah. The Mali declaration was signed July 18, 1986, in Moscow by Andrei 
Gromyko and Moussa Traore, president of Mali. The Benin declaration was signed November 25, 
1986, in Moscow by Andrei Gromyko and Mathaeu Kerekou, president of Benin. Besides the Soviet 
Union, other Warsaw Pact countries have concluded friendship treaties with Third World countries. 



827 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Table 30. Five- Year Plans, 1928-95 



Date 




Plan 


Date 




Plan 


1928- 


-32 . . 


. First Five-Year Plan 1 


1966- 


-70 . . 


. Eighth Five-Year Plan 


1933- 


-37 . . 


Second Five-Year Plan 


1971- 


-75 . . 


Ninth Five-Year Plan 


1938- 


-41 . . 


. Third Five-Year Plan 2 


1976-80 .. 


Tenth Five-Year Plan 


1945- 


-50 . . 


Fourth Five-Year Plan 


1981- 


-85 . . 


Eleventh Five-Year Plan 


1951- 


-55 . . 


. Fifth Five-Year Plan 


1986- 


-90 . . 


. Twelfth Five-Year Plan 


1956- 


-60 . . 


Sixth Five-Year Plan 


1991- 


■95 . . 


Thirteenth Five-Year Plan 4 


1959- 


-65 . . 


Seventh Five-Year Plan 3 









1 Implemented October 1928, although not officially approved by Sixteenth Party Conference until April 
1929. 

2 Interrupted by World War II. 

3 A seven-year plan that included last two years of Sixth Five-Year Plan. 

4 Under discussion in 1989. 



Table 31. Estimated Gross National Product by Sector, 
Selected Years, 1970-88 
(in billions of 1982 rubles at factor cost) 1 



Sector 1970 1975 1980 1985 1986 1987 1988 



Agriculture 139.6 124.7 125.6 132.9 147.5 141.8 141.0 

Industry 137.9 181.3 204.2 225.1 230.7 237.8 244.7 

Services 93.3 109.8 124.9 139.4 142.5 147.0 151.4 

Construction 42.0 51.6 51.4 54.3 56.4 57.7 59.2 

Transportation 35.9 49.3 58.8 65.5 67.5 68.2 70.0 

Trade 28.5 36.1 40.9 44.6 44.5 45.2 46.7 

Communications 3.1 4.2 5.3 6.4 6.8 7.2 7.6 

Other 2 11.4 12.6 13.6 14.3 14.5 14.5 14.5 



TOTAL 3 491.8 569.5 624.8 682.6 710.3 719.5 735.2 



1 For value of the ruble — see Glossary. Factor cost refers to a combination of government-administered 
prices of land, labor, and capital. 

2 Includes military personnel. 

3 Figures do not add to total because of rounding. 

Source: Based on information from United States, Central Intelligence Agency and Defense 
Intelligence Agency, "The Soviet Economy Stumbles Badly in 1989," Washing- 
ton, April 20, 1990, Table C-l. 



828 



Appendix A 



Table 32. Industrial Production, Estimated Value 
Added, Selected Years, 1970-88 1 
(in billions of 1982 rubles) 2 



Industry 


1970 


1975 


1980 


1985 


1986 


1987 


1988 


Machinery 


44 1 


62.3 


72.6 


80.2 


82.3 


85.4 


88.4 




. 13.1 


16.8 


19.4 


20.2 


20.9 


21.3 


21.6 




. 12.0 


14.7 


15.7 


17.2 


16.4 


17.0 


17.7 




11.1 


12.6 


12.3 


13.5 


14.1 


14.5 


14.9 


Light industry 


. 11.0 


12.5 


14.1 


15.2 


15.4 


15.7 


16.0 




9.8 


11.9 


12.6 


13.1 


13.6 


13.8 


14.0 


Construction materials 


9.1 


11.8 


12.3 


13.5 


14.0 


14.5 


14.9 




8.5 


12.6 


14.6 


17.7 


18.5 


19.0 


19.4 




8.1 


11.4 


14.2 


16.5 


17.1 


17.8 


18.2 


Nonferrous metals . . . 


5.8 


7.6 


8.2 


9.0 


9.3 


9.5 


9.8 


Other 


5.5 


7.2 


8.1 


8.9 


9.2 


9.4 


9.7 


TOTAL 3 


137.9 


181.3 


204.2 


225.1 


230.7 


237.8 


244.7 



1 Government-administered price of goods, less the cost of materials. 

2 For value of the ruble — see Glossary. 

3 Figures do not add to total because of rounding. 



Source: Based on information from United States, Central Intelligence Agency and Defense 
Intelligence Agency, "The Soviet Economy Stumbles Badly in 1989," Washing- 
ton, April 20, 1990, Table C-2. 



829 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Table 33. Selected Ministries Producing Military 
Weapons and Components, 1989 * 



Ministry 


Military Production Specialization 




Aircraft, helicopters, and missiles 


Communications Equipment 






Electronic warfare equipment and radar 




Artillery, infantry weapons, mobile ballistic mis- 




siles, and tanks 




Radar and military electronics 


General Machine Building .... 


Missiles and space equipment 


Machine Tool and Tool-Building 






Munitions and solid propellants 


Medium Machine Building .... 


Nuclear weapons and lasers 




Radar, radios, and guidance and control systems 




Ships 



* Includes ministries having the largest percentage of output composed of military weapons or their 
components. Other ministries also produced military equipment or components, but to a lesser ex- 
tent of their total output. The ministries listed here are among the eighteen ministries in the machine- 
building and metal-working complex (MBMW). 



Source: Based on information from United States, Department of Defense, Soviet Military 
Power, 1987, Washington, March 1987, 10; and William F. Scott, "Moscow's 
Military-Industrial Complex," Air Force Magazine, 70, No. 3, March 1987, 50. 



Table 34. Production of Major Farm Commodities, 1956-87 
(in millions of tons) 



Commodity 1956-60 1961-65 1966-70 1971-75 1976-80 1981-85 1986 1987 



Grain 121.5 130.3 167.6 181.6 205.0 180.3 210.1 211.3 

Potatoes 88.3 81.6 94.8 89.8 82.6 78.4 87.4 75.9 

Sugar beets 45.6 59.2 81.1 76.0 88.7 76.4 79.3 90.0 

Vegetables 15.1 16.9 19.5 23.0 26.3 29.2 29.7 29.1 

Fruits 4.5 6.5 9.7 12.4 15.2 17.8 18.3 n.a. 

Raw cotton 4.4 5.0 6.1 7.7 8.6 8.3 8.2 8.1 

Sunflowers 3.7 5.1 6.4 6.0 5.3 5.0 5.3 6.1 



n.a. — not available. 

Source: Based on information from Gosudarstvennyi komitet po statistike, Narodnoe khozi- 
aistvoSSSR za 70 let, Moscow, 1987, 209, 239; and "Zakrepit' dostignutoe, uskorit' 
tempy," Izvestiia [Moscow], No. 24, January 24, 1988, 2. 



830 



Appendix A 



Table 35. Farm Machinery Pool, Selected Years, 1960-86 
(in thousands) 



Machinery 


1960 


1970 


1980 


1985 


1986 




1,122 


1,977 


2,562 


2,775 


2,776 




813 


1,053 


1,103 


1,167 


1,148 




760 


1,136 


1,596 


1,851 


1,917 




754 


1,144 


1,117 


1,265 


1,295 




497 


623 


722 


828 


827 


Tractor-drawn mowers 




546 


686 


702 


672 




270 


335 


471 


521 


506 




121 


139 


269 


256 


254 






88 


230 


224 


224 


Milking machines 








401 


408 


..... 48 


169 


361 




35 


34 


52 


32 


30 




34 


57 


62 


53 


52 




11 


39 


55 


63 


63 


Potato harvesters 


10 


36 


70 


63 


60 



n.a. — not available. 



Source: Based on information from Gosudarstvennyi komitet po statistike, Narodnoe khozi- 
aistvo SSSR za 70 let, Moscow, 1987, 207, 283. 



Table 36. Sown Area for Major Crops, Selected Years, 1940-86 
(in millions of hectares) 



Crop 1940 1960 1970 1980 1985 1986 



Grain 110.7 115.6 119.3 126.6 117.9 116.5 

Bare fallow 28.9 17.4 18.4 13.8 21.3 32.7 

Forage crops 18.1 63.1 62.8 66.9 69.8 71.4 

Technical crops 11.8 13.1 14.5 14.6 13.9 13.7 

Vegetables 10.0 11.2 10.1 9.2 8.7 8.7 



TOTAL 179.5 220.4 225.1 231.1 231.6 243.0 



Source: Based on information from Gosudarstvennyi komitet po statistike, Narodnoe khozi- 
aistvo SSSR za 70 let, Moscow, 1987, 224-25. 



831 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Table 37. Agricultural Chemicals Delivered, 
Selected Years, 1970-87 
(in thousands of tons) 



Chemical 1970 1980 1985 1986 1987 
Mineral fertilizers 1 

Nitrogenous 4,605 8,262 10,950 11,475 n.a. 

Potash 2,574 4,904 6,822 6,677 n.a. 

Phosphatic 2,160 4,760 6,839 7,567 n.a. 

Ground rock phosphate 973 830 776 787 n.a. 

Total mineral fertilizers 10,312 18,756 25,387 26,506 27,400 

Plant protective chemicals 2 

Herbicides 50 127 160 172 n.a. 

Other 120 152 202 174 n.a. 

Total plant protective chemicals 170 279 362 346 n.a. 

Chemical feed additives 1 

Nitrogenous n.a. 86 223 204 n.a. 

Phosphatic 51 432 765 823 n.a. 

Total chemical feed additives .. 51 518 988 1,027 1,100 

TOTAL 10,533 19,553 26,737 27,879 28,500 

n.a. — not available. 

1 Calculated at 100 percent nutritive content. 

2 Calculated at 100 percent active-ingredient content. 

Source: Based on information from Gosudarstvennyi komitet po statistike, Narodnoe khozi- 

aistvo SSSR za 70 let, Moscow, 1987, 284; and "Zakrepit' dostignutoe, uskorit' 

tempy," Izvestiia [Moscow], No. 24, January 24, 1988, 3. 



Table 38. Selected Animal Products, Selected Years, 1940-87 



Product 1940 1960 1970 1980 1985 1986 1987 



Eggs 1 12.2 27.4 40.7 67.9 77.3 80.7 82.1 

Meat 2 4.7 8.7 12.3 15.1 17.1 18.0 18.6 

Milk 3 33.6 61.7 83.0 90.9 98.6 102.2 103.4 

Wool 4 161.0 339.0 402.0 443.0 447.0 469.0 455.0 



1 In billions. 

2 In million of tons of slaughtered weight. 

3 In millions of tons. 

4 In thousands of tons. 

Source: Based on information from Gosudarstvennyi komitet po statistike, Narodnoe khozi- 
aistvo SSSR za 70 let, Moscow, 1987, 258; and "Zakrepit' dostignutoe, uskorit' 
tempy," Izvestiia [Moscow], No. 24, January 24, 1988, 2. 



832 



Appendix A 



Table 39. Freight Traffic by Mode of Transport, 
Selected Years, 1940-86 1 
(in billions of ton-kilometers) 



Mode of Transport 


1940 


1 ocn 


iy /u 


lyyu 


i oq<; 


1 OQ£ 




. . 420.7 


1,504.3 


2,494.7 


3,439.9 


3,718.4 


3,834.5 


Inland waterway 


. . 36.1 


99.6 


174.0 


244.9 


261.5 


255.6 


Merchant marine 


24.9 


131.5 


656.1 


848.2 


905.0 


969.7 




8.9 


98.5 


220.8 


432.1 


476.4 


488.5 


Pipelines 














Petroleum and 
















. . 3.8 


51.2 


281.7 


1,216.0 


1,312.5 


1,401.3 


Natural gas 


n.a 


12.6 


131.4 


596.9 


1,130.5 


1,240.0 


Total pipelines . . 


. . 3.8 


63.8 


413.1 


1,812.9 


2,443.0 


2,641.3 




.. 0.0 2 


0.6 


1.9 


3.1 


3.4 


3.4 


TOTAL 


, , 494.4 


1,898.3 


3,960.6 


6,781.1 


7,807.7 


8,193.0 



n.a. — not applicable. 

1 Freight traffic is measured in ton-kilometers, i.e., the movement of one ton of cargo a distance of 
one kilometer. Ton-kilometers are computed by multiplying the weight (in tons) of each shipment 
transported by the distance hauled (in kilometers). 

2 Figure for 1940 is 20 million. 



Source: Based on information from Gosudarstvennyi komitet po statistike, Narodnoe khozi- 
aistvo SSSR za 70 let, Moscow, 1987, 341. 



833 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Table 40. Major Rail Lines, 1988 



Union Republic 


English 




Railroad * 


Equivalent 


Headquarters 


Russian Republic 














Tynda 






Khabarovsk 






Gor'kiy 






Kemerovo 


Krasnoyarskaya 


Krasnoyarsk 


Krasnoyarsk 






Kuybyshev 






Moscow 


Oktiabr'skaya 


October 


Leningrad 






Saratov 






Yaroslavl' 






Rostov-na-Donu 






Sverdlovsk 






Irkutsk 


Yugo-Vostochnaya 


Southeastern 


Voronezh 






Chelyabinsk 






Chita 






Novosibirsk 


Ukrainian Republic 










Donetsk 






L'vov 






Odessa 






Dnepropetrovsk 






Kiev 






Khar'kov 


Other republics 










Alma-Ata 


Azerbaydzhanskaya 


Azerbaydzhan 


Baku 






Minsk 






Kishinev 




Baltic 


Riga 


Sredneaziatskaya 


Central Asian 


Tashkent 






Tselinograd 






Tbilisi 






Aktyubinsk 



* In Russian, each railroad's name is followed by "zheleznaya doroga" (railroad), except the Baykalo- 
Amurskaya, which is followed by "magistral"' (main line). 



NOTE — The Trans-Siberian Railway (see Glossary) is an informal term for portions of 
several railroads listed above that link the western part of the Soviet Union and 
the Soviet Far East. 

Source: Based on information from "Reference Aid: Directory of the USSR Ministry of 
Railways," Joint Publications Research Service, Soviet Union: Economic Affairs, 
June 29, 1988, B-74. 



834 



Appendix A 
Table 41. Principal Electrified Rail Lines, 1987 

Principal Cities Approximate Length 

Rail Line on Line (in kilometers) 

Moscow to Kuyenga Moscow 7,000 

Kuybyshev 

Omsk 

Tayshet 

Karymskaya 

Kuyenga 

Leningrad to Norashen Leningrad 3,600 

Moscow 

Khar'kov 

Rostov-na-Donu 

Tbilisi 

Leninaken 

Norashen 

Moscow to Kurgan Moscow 2,200 

Gor'kiy 

Sverdlovsk 

Kurgan 

Moscow to Omsk Moscow 2,100 

Kirov 
Sverdlovsk 
Tyumen' 
Omsk 

Novosibirsk to Korshunikha Novosibirsk 2,000 

Novoleuznetsk 

Abakan 

Korshunikha 

Magnitogorsk to Zharyk Magnitogorsk 1,300 

Moscow 
Karanga 
Zharyk 

Moscow to Chop . . Moscow 1,300 

Kiev 

L'vov 

Chop 

Moscow to Rostov-na-Donu Moscow 1,200 

Kochetovka 
Rostov-na-Donu 



835 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Table 42. Passengers Boarded by Mode of 

Transport, Selected Years, 1940-86 
(in millions of passengers boarded) 



Mode of Transport 1940 1960 1970 1980 1985 1986 



Railroad 1,377.0 2,231.0 3,354.0 4,072.0 4,166.0 4,345.0 

Bus 590.0 11,315.0 27,343.0 42,175.0 47,006.0 48,800.0 

Inland waterway 73.4 119.0 145.0 138.0 132.0 136.0 

Merchant marine 9.7 26.7 38.5 51.7 50.3 50.8 

Civil aviation 0.4 16.3 71.4 103.8 112.6 116.1 



TOTAL 2,050.5 13,708.0 30,951.9 46,540.5 51,466.9 53,447.9 



Source: Based on information from Gosudarstvennyi komitet po statistike, Narodnoe khozi- 
aistvo SSSR za 70 let, Moscow 1987, 344-68. 



Table 43. Metropolitan Rail Systems (Metros), 1987 1 



Number Length 3 

City 2 of Stations (in kilometers) 



Moscow 132 222 

Leningrad 48 90 

Kiev 27 36 

Tbilisi 19 26 

Baku 16 25 

Khar'kov 21 30 

Tashkent 17 22 

Yerevan 8 11 

Minsk 9 11 

Gor'kiy 6 8 

Novosibirsk 5 9 



1 In 1987 the following cities had systems under construction: Dnepropetrovsk, Kuybyshev, and Sverd- 
lovsk; the following cities had systems planned: Alma-Ata, Chelyabinsk, Krasnoyarsk, Riga, Rostov- 
na-Donu, Odessa, and Omsk. 

2 Cities listed in order of entry into service. 

3 Approximate length of double-track line. 

Source: Based on information from Gosudarstvennyi komitet po statistike, Narodnoe khozi- 
aistvo SSSR za 70 let, Moscow, 1987, 367. 



836 



Appendix 



CO 

I 

C5N 



CO (O N o 

* n cd d 

CO N ^< if) 

Ol O lO (N 



o ir> o 

00 ^ CM O 

n m n ^< 

oo a~) i£> cm 

m co" 

CM 



CO CN o 

cyi oo cd cd 



















lO 






© 


eh 




CM 


CM 




r-. 


CO 


cm 


m 








co 




in 
















eo" 










co 



O CM 
CO CO 



<0 CO 
CM CM 

<-o CO 



t ° 

H o 

09 

II 

14 



oq o co 

oi d N 

CM O") lO 

lO CO CO 
^ CM 



a-> co oi 
d in 



o 




o 




CM 


f»! 


co 


© 


<£> 


co 




CO 




co 







co m co cm 
m o co 

CO V£> 



r-g 
ia 

O T3 J3 
J2 C $-> 



3 _ O 

U « *- 

CO 



837 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Table 45. Passenger Traffic by Mode of 

Transport, Selected Years, 1940-86 
(in billions of passenger-kilometers) 



Mode of Transport 1940 1960 1970 1980 1985 1986 



Railroad 100.4 176.0 273.5 342.2 374.0 390.2 

Inland waterway 3.8 4.3 5.4 6.1 5.9 6.0 

Bus 3.4 61.0 202.5 389.8 446.6 462.8 

Merchant marine 0.9 1.3 1.6 2.5 2.6 2.5 

Civil aviation 0.2 12.1 78.2 160.6 188.4 195.8 



TOTAL 108.7 254.7 561.2 901.2 1,017.5 1,057.3 



* Passenger traffic is measured in passenger-kilometers, i.e., the movement of one person a distance 
of one kilometer. Passenger-kilometers are computed by multiplying the number of persons trans- 
ported by the distance traveled (in kilometers). 

Source: Based on information from Gosudarstvennyi komitet po statistike, Narodnoe khozi- 
aistvo SSSR za 70 let, Moscow, 1987, 342. 



838 



Appendix A 



r 



c 

O % 



O 



CO 



S -6 



1 £.S« * 

-n 3 S bo "3 

•Sp g § g s 3 

Q 



2 c 

a <s « <fl 
c c ° « 
"G -3 ~ co .„ 

Ill r% I 

8 6 



o ~v 



o o c tj a s 
U 



I s 



K bo 

so 1) 



O sj o 

S co « 
o 3 o 



a 

o 

X) 
3 

H 



i i 
o o 
-a -a 



bo C 

s < 



:rai 












bo 






1 






long- 






[edium- to 
Tu-154A 


154B 


154M 


Tu- 


Tu- 



839 



Soviet Union: A 



Country Study 



2 $ 
If 



bo>< 



£> S 6 
1 

Q 



S3 £ 

O 3 

o * 

*■» TJ 
T3 



O 



.la- 

p 



Oh & S 

2 | § 

» • 8 

fl to n 



| 2 



U 

-co .S 

co 5 

3 C 

a g 



no.: 



OS 3 
<£ bo 



I 3 



1 ^ 



o £ 



O o 
C fl v 

<L> O N 

CO ■!->•-« 







1 


C 


nginf 


o 

XI 

Ih 


o 

X> 
Ih 


tiS 

o 
X! 

Ih 


W 


3 


3 


3 




CM 


CD 





r 1 i- 1 

o S3 



CO 



GO 



840 



Appendix A 



8jt » 

ot 3 ° 
^ -° g 

S * S Si 

£ u & & 

3 bo «5 C 



8. .3 



Si 

<u • - 
bo ^3 

a B 



13 

i 



> bo 
O 

< 



is 

O «3 



T3 



a &p 

13 ° J2 

< £ 
■ 8d * 

4J O 5 

O ■§ £ 



'B "2 

8 .1 "* 

5 * s 

o|| 

6 fi g 

§ § g 



5 t; 
* 3 

6 XI 

o " 

u >? 



■a 



C bo 3 
o fl » 



a 

o 

XI 



o 

XI 



55 



a 



a 

8 



841 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



bo 

u co n 

° • & 

Bp. g 13 

k -3 § o 
£ a s '1 



T3 S 



S>2 



bo S 



u -5 en 
II S 

u o 3 

bo *- c/3 

■S JS 73 
4S <P 



u i 

'SoQ 
c 



U CO 



. oj o 



O O M S .h Q,!- 1 ' w CO w 



■ '3d 

T3 5 



O -2 

If 



2 T3 



3 S3 



Dh 3 



I 5 



a C tj 
a- o o 

2 i T 
go i 

I H O 
'. < H 

C - « 



842 



Appendix A 



Table 47. Hard- Currency Trading Partners, 1970-85 * 



Western Industrialized Countries 



European Economic Community Other European Countries Other Countries 



Belgium 

Britain 

Denmark 

France 

Greece 

Ireland 

Italy 

Luxembourg 
Netherlands 
West Germany 



Austria (since 1971) 

Iceland (since 1977) 

Liechtenstein 

Malta 

Norway 

Portugal 

Spain 

Sweden 

Switzerland 

Turkey (since 1983) 



Australia 

Canada 

Japan 

New Zealand 
South Africa 
United States 



Africa 

Algeria (since 1980) 

Angola 

Benin 

Burkina Faso 
Burundi 
Cameroon 
Cape Verde 

Central African Republic 
Congo 

Cote d'lvoire 
Equatorial Guinea 
Ethiopia 
Gabon 

Latin America 
Argentina 
Bolivia 
Brazil 
Chile 
Colombia 
Costa Rica 
Dominican Republic 
Ecuador 

Asia and the Middle East 
Burma 
Cyprus 
Hong Kong 
Indonesia 
Iraq 
Israel 
Jordan 
Kuwait 



Third World Countries 

Gambia 

Ghana (since 1976) 

Guinea (since 1980) 

Guinea-Bissau 

Kenya 

Liberia 

Libya 

Madagascar 
Malawi 

Mali (since 1978) 

Mauritania 

Mauritius 

Morocco (since 1982) 

El Salvador 

Guatemala 

Guyana 

Honduras 

Jamaica 

Mexico 

Nicaragua 



Lebanon 
Macao 
Malaysia 
Nepal 

North Yemen 

Philippines 

Singapore 



Mozambique 

Niger 

Nigeria 

Rwanda 

Senegal 

Sierra Leone 

Sudan 

Tanzania 

Togo 

Tunisia (since 1974) 

Uganda 

Zaire 

Zambia 

Panama 

Paraguay 

Peru 

Trinidad and 

Tobago 
Uruguay 
Venezuela 



South Yemen 
Sri Lanka (since 

1977) 
Saudi Arabia 
Thailand 
United Arab 

Emirates 



* As reported to the International Monetary Fund by partner countries. Some of the trade the Soviet 
Union conducts with Third World partners is on a barter basis. Likewise, those Third World coun- 
tries that are considered bartering partners may conduct some trade on a hard-currency basis. 

Source: Based on information from United States Congress, 100th, 1st Session, Joint Economic 
Committee, Gorbachev's Economic Plans, 2, Washington, 1987, 486-87. 



843 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Table 48. Soviet Actions Prompting United States 
Trade Restrictions, 1974-82 



Date 



Soviet Action 



United States Trade Restriction 



1974 



Placement of obstacles to 
emigration of Jews 



Jackson-Vanik Amendment to 
Trade Reform Act of 1974 linked 
granting of most-favored-nation 
status to rights of Soviet Jews to 
emigrate from Soviet Union. 
Stevenson Amendment to Export- 
Import Bank Act lowered ceiling 
on United States credits to Soviet 
Union. 



July-August 
1978 . . . 



Soviet-Cuban intervention Controls placed on United States 



in African affairs and 
internal human rights 
violations, specifically 
trials of Anatolii 
Sharanskii and Alex- 
ander Ginsburg 



oil and gas equipment exports to 
Soviet Union. Sale of a Sperry- 
Univac computer to TASS was 
denied. 



Early 1980 Invasion of Afghanistan 

by Soviet armed forces 
in December 1979 



United States grain exports and 
phosphates used in fertilizer 
production embargoed; controls 
increased on high-technology ex- 
ports, including oil and gas 
equipment. 



December 1981 



Imposition of martial law 
in Poland in December 
1981 



Restrictions placed on granting 
credit to Soviet Union; more se- 
vere export-licensing procedures 
imposed. 



June 1982 



No change in situation in 
Poland 



Foreign subsidiaries and licensees of 
United States firms forbidden to 
sell energy-related technology of 
United States origin to Soviet 
Union. 



Source: Based on information from United States Congress, 100th, 1st Session, Joint 
Economic Committee, Gorbachev's Economic Plans, 2, Washington, 1987, 434, 450; 
Perry L. Patterson, "Foreign Trade," in James Cracraft (ed.), The Soviet Union 
Today, Chicago, 1988, 216; and Gordon B. Smith (ed.), The Politics of East-West 
Trade, Boulder, Colorado, 1984, 26-27, 176-78. 



844 



Appendix A 



Table 49. Major Noncommunist Trading Partners, 
1980, 1985, and 1986 1 
(value in millions of rubles) 2 

1980 1985 1986 



Percentage Percentage Percentage 



Country 


Value 


of Trade 


Value 


ot Tra.de 


Value 


of Trade 


West Germany 


5,780.0 


6. 1 


7 094.6 


5.0 


5,577.9 


4.3 




3 752 7 


4.0 


3,778.7 


2.7 


2,670.5 


2.0 


Italv 


3 034 3 


3.2 


3,796.7 


2.7 


3,054.3 


2.3 


Tanan 


2 722 8 


2.9 


3,216.0 


2.3 


3,185.3 


2.4 


Britain 


1 811 8 


1.9 


1,903.0 


1.3 


1,788.6 


1.4 


United States 


1,502.5 


1.6 


2,703. 1 


1.9 


1,458.5 


1.1 


Netherlands .... 


1,387.5 


1.5 


1,300.3 


0.9 


821.4 


0.6 


Belgium 


1 225 3 


1.3 


1,440.0 


1.0 


1,049.2 


0.8 


•\rgentina 


1 192 5 


1.3 


1,292.9 


0.9 






Canada 


1 001 6 


1.1 


966.9 


0.7 


633.6 


0.5 


Austria 


976.2 


1.0 


1,669.2 


1.2 


1,392.5 


0.1 


Switzerland .... 


847.6 


0.9 


950.9 


0.7 


742.6 


0.6 


Australia 


781 4 


0.8 


545.8 


0.4 


517.3 


0.4 


Iraq 


731.7 


0.8 


824.2 


0.6 


638.6 


0.5 




676.9 


0.7 


798.7 


0.6 


543.1 


0.4 


Greece 


501.3 


0.5 


728.4 


0.5 


284.0 


0.2 


Libya 


450.9 


0.5 


961.2 


0.7 


730.6 


0.6 


Spain 


402.7 


0.4 


588.5 


0.4 


296.9 


0.2 




341.3 


0.4 


n.a. 


n.a. 


n.a. 


n.a. 


Malaysia 


207.5 


0.2 


n.a. 


n.a. 


n.a. 


n.a. 


Algeria 


n.a. 


n.a. 


405.2 


0.3 


327.8 


0.3 


Brazil 


n.a. 


n.a. 


450.3 


0.3 


266.8 


0.2 


Nicaragua 


n.a. 


n.a. 


n.a. 


n.a. 


284.8 


0.2 


Other 


64,768.8 


68.9 


106,678.1 


74.9 


104,669.7 


80.9 


TOTAL 


. 94,097.3 


100.0 


142,092.7 


100.0 


130,934.0 


100.0 



n.a. — not available. 

1 Hard-currency trading partners only. 

2 For value of the ruble — see Glossary. 



Source: Based on information from Ministerstvo vneshnei torgovli, Vneshniaia torgovlia SSSR v 
1980 g., Moscow, 1981, 9-15; and Ministerstvo vneshnei torgovli, Vneshniaia torgovlia 
SSSR v 1986 g. ; Moscow, 1987, 9-15. 



845 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



a 



T-HOCOOOCsf-^lO 

co ih o ^ T) 'fl 
l cm cm cm t4" -i-T 



O m o*> "T 
o n cm m 

(£5 th U3 



o m n in cm 



m in cn cm n en 
daico'cn'^ffiNin 

CM CM CM CM CM CM CM 



CMO^^DCMCO'^eOCO 

(odiO'H^DincdcTi 
CMr^r~>.^D<>DinOc<*> 

^ Tf< ^ CO * CO 



din'ffi^in'iONO 



-HCOco^mcMNOi 



omo-^HCMen^in 
r^t^Ncococococo 



as 



846 



Appendix A 



Table 51. Trade with Countries of Socialist Orientation, 
Selected Years, 1970-85 
(in percentages of trade with Third World countries) 1 



First Category 2 Second Category 3 

Year Exports Imports Balance 4 Exports Imports Balance 4 



1970 3.7 2.8 11.3 16.1 7.4 107.9 

1975 14.1 4.7 25.5 26.4 18.5 - 15.4 

1980 13.6 6.1 316.9 20.6 11.1 344.4 

1981 14.1 4.6 495.2 26.6 5.9 1,229.7 

1982 14.1 4.7 638.6 25.6 6.3 1,366.6 

1983 17.9 4.3 875.9 15.3 10.9 72.8 

1984 22.4 4.5 1,857.7 16.0 14.8 -307.2 

1985 21.6 4.9 -937.3 19.2 14.5 -90.2 



1 Percentage shares of exports and imports are computed on the basis of Soviet foreign trade yearbook 
statistics. Thus, arms sales are not taken into account. 

2 Countries having observer status in the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon): Afghan- 
istan, Angola, Ethiopia, Laos, and South Yemen. 

3 Countries not having observer status in Comecon but having privileged affiliations with it: Algeria, 
Benin, Burma, Congo, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Madagascar, Mali, Nigeria, Seychelles, Syria, 
Tanzania, and Zimbabwe. 

4 In millions of United States dollars. 

Source: Based on information from United States Congress, 100th, 1st Session, Joint Eco- 
nomic Committee, Gorbachev's Economic Plans, 2, Washington, 1987, 511. 



Table 52. Trade with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting 

Countries, Selected Years, 1970-85 1 
(in percentages of trade with Third World countries) 2 



Year Exports Imports Balance 3 



1970 29.9 15.1 184.4 

1975 37.4 27.0 - 104.8 

1980 30.0 15.0 584.5 

1981 36.6 13.2 1,163.9 

1982 40.9 21.6 1,126.0 

1983 32.0 29.4 -471.4 

1984 18.9 34.7 1,945.5 

1985 16.2 31.4 1,809.4 



1 Members included Algeria, Ecuador, Gabon, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, 
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela. 

2 Percentage shares of exports and imports are computed on the basis of Soviet foreign trade yearbook 
statistics. Thus, arms sales are not taken into account. 

3 In millions of United States dollars. 

Source: Based on information from United States Congress, 100th, 1st Session, Joint Eco- 
nomic Committee, Gorbachev's Economic Plans, 2, Washington, 1987, 511. 



847 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Table 53. Military Capabilities, 1989 



Type and Description In Inventory 



Strategic offensive nuclear forces 
Intercontinental ballistic missiles 

SS-11 380 

SS-17 110 

SS-18 308 

SS-19 320 

SS-24 (MOD 1) 18 1 

SS-24 (MOD 2) 40 1 

SS-25 170 1 

Sea-launched ballistic missiles 

SS-N-5 36 

SS-N-6 256 

SS-N-8 286 

SS-N-17 12 

SS-N-18 224 

SS-N-20 120 

SS-N-23 96 

Bombers 2 3 

Tu-16 265 

Tu-22 75 

Tu-26 350 

Tu-95 and Tu- 142 160 

Tu-160 10 

Strategic defensive forces 

Antiballistic missile radar 1 

Interceptors 3 2,200 

Antisatellite interceptor 1 

Surface-to-air missile launchers 4 8,000 

Antiballistic missile launchers 100 

Intermediate- and shorter-range nuclear forces 

Intermediate-range ballistic missiles 5 

SS-20 262 

Medium-range ballistic missiles 5 

SS-4 30 

Short-range ballistic missile launchers 

SS-12 135 

SS-23 102 

SS-21 1,000 

Scud 630 

Tactical aviation 

Tactical aircraft 3 5,170 

Ground Forces 

Motorized rifle divisions 152 

Tank divisions 53 

Airborne divisions 7 

Static defense divisions 2 

Main battle tanks 53,000 

Artillery pieces 49,000 



848 



Appendix A 



Table 53. — Continued 



Type and Description In Inventory 



Ground Forces — Continued 

Armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles 61,000 

Helicopters 4,300 

Naval Forces 

Aircraft carriers , 4 

Large principal surface combatants 116 

Other combatants 445 

Ballistic missile submarines 69 

Attack submarines 256 

Other submarines 34 

Naval aircraft 1,300 



1 Estimated. 

2 Includes 160 Tu-26 (Backfire) bombers in Naval Aviation but excludes 175 Tu-16 (Badger) bombers 
in Naval Aviation. 

3 Excludes over 5,000 combat-capable trainers. 

4 In Soviet Union only; excludes Soviet strategic surface-to-air missiles in Mongolia or with groups 
of forces abroad. 

5 Deployed missiles as of May 1989. 

Source: Based on information from United States, Department of Defense, Soviet Military 
Power, 1989, Washington, 1989, 14-15. 



849 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Table 54. Insignia Colors of the Armed 
Forces, 1989 1 



Color Armed Forces 



Red Motorized Rifle Troops 

Black Air Defense Forces (nonaviation personnel) 

Engineer Troops 
Rocket Troops and Artillery 
Strategic Rocket Forces 
Tank Troops 

Light blue Airborne Troops 

Air Defense Forces (aviation personnel) 
Air Forces 
Naval Aviation 

Magenta Administration Troops 

Medical Troops 
Military Procuracy 
Quartermaster Troops 
Veterinary Troops 

Navy blue Naval Forces 2 

Deep crimson Internal Troops (MVD) 3 

Green Border Troops (KGB) 4 

Royal blue Security Troops (KGB) 



1 The Ground Forces, as an entity, has no insignia color because it consists of the Motorized Rifle Troops, 
Tank Troops, Rocket Troops and Artillery, and other components, which have specific insignia colors. 

2 Support and staff components of the Naval Forces have insignia of colors other than navy blue. 

3 MVD — Ministerstvo vnutrennykh del (Ministry of Internal Affairs). 

4 KGB — Komitet gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti (Committee for State Security). 



850 



Appendix A 



Table 55. Higher Military Schools and Military 
Academies, 1988 



Armed Service 


Higher 


Military Schools 


Military 


Component 


Command 


Engineering 


Political 


Academies 




4 1 





1 


1 


Ground Forces 










Motorized Rifle Troops 


9 





2 


3 2 




6 


2 


1 3 


1 


Rocket Troops and Artillery 


7 


3 





1 


Air Defense of Ground Forces . . 


3 


2 





1 






13 


1 


2 




10 


3 


1 


2 




7 


3 


1 


2 




1 











Special troops 












2 


1 





1 




2 


1 


1 4 


1 




7 


3 





1 




13 


4 


2 


1 


Border Troops (KGB) 5 


2 





1 





Internal Troops (MVD) 6 


4 





1 





TOTAL 


92 


35 


12 


17 



1 Joint school for command and engineering. 

2 Includes Voroshilov General Staff Academy and Lenin Military-Political Academy. 

3 Joint school for Tank Troops and Rocket Troops and Artillery. 

4 Joint school for Engineer Troops and Signal Troops. 

5 KGB — Komitet gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti (Committee for State Security). 

6 MVD — Ministerstvo vnutrennykh del (Ministry of Internal Affairs). 



851 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Table 56. Organizational History of the Police, 1989 



Period Organization Name 



Security police 

1917-22 Ail-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating 

Counterrevolution and Sabotage (Vserossiiskaia 
chrezvychainaia komissiia po bor'be s kontrrevoliu- 
tsiei i sabotazhem — Vecheka; also known as VChK 
or Cheka) 

1922- 23 State Political Directorate (Gosudarstvennoe 

politicheskoe upravlenie — GPU) 

1923- 34 Unified State Political Directorate (Ob"edinennoe 

gosudarstvennoe politicheskoe upravlenie — OGPU) 

1934-41 Main Directorate for State Security (Glavnoe uprav- 
lenie gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti — GUGB) 

1941 People's Commissariat of State Security (Narodnyi 

komissariat gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti — NKGB) 

1941-43 GUGB 

1943-46 NKGB 

1946-53 Ministry of State Security (Ministerstvo gosudarstven- 
noi bezopasnosti — MGB) 

1953- 54 GUGB * 

1954- Committee for State Security (Komitet gosudarstven- 

noi bezopasnosti — KGB) 

Regular police 

1917-46 People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (Narodnyi 

komissariat vnutrennykh del — NKVD) 

1946-62 Ministry of Internal Affairs (Ministerstvo vnutrennykh 

del— MVD) 

1962-68 Ministry for the Preservation of Public Order 

(Ministerstvo okhrany obshchestvennogo 
poriadka— MOOP) 

1968- MVD 



* Subordinate to MVD during this period. 



852 



Appendix B 



The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance 

THE FOUNDING of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance 
(Comecon, also referred to as CMEA or CEMA) dates from a 1949 
communique agreed upon by Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, 
Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union. The reasons for the cre- 
ation of Comecon in the aftermath of World War II are compli- 
cated, given the political and economic turmoil of that time. The 
primary factor in Comecon's formation, however, was Joseph V. 
Stalin's desire to enforce Soviet domination of the small countries 
of Eastern Europe and to deter some states that had expressed in- 
terest in the Marshall Plan (see Glossary). The stated purpose of 
the organization was to enable member states ' 'to exchange eco- 
nomic experiences, extend technical aid to one another, and to 
render mutual assistance with respect to raw materials, foodstuffs, 
machines, equipment, etc." Although in the late 1960s ' 'coopera- 
tion" was the official term used to describe its activities, improved 
economic integration was always Comecon's goal. 

Soviet domination of Comecon was a function of its economic, 
political, and military power. The Soviet Union possessed 90 per- 
cent of total Comecon land and energy resources, 70 percent of 
its population, 65 percent of its total national income, and indus- 
trial and military capacities second in the world only to those of 
the United States. The location of many Comecon committee head- 
quarters in Moscow and the large number of Soviet citizens in posi- 
tions of authority also testified to the power of the Soviet Union 
within the organization. 

Soviet efforts to exercise political power over its Comecon part- 
ners sometimes were met with determined opposition, however. 
The "sovereign equality" of members prescribed in the Comecon 
Charter assured members that they could abstain from a given 
project if they did not wish to participate. East European mem- 
bers frequently invoked this principle when they feared that 
economic interdependence would further reduce their political 
sovereignty. Thus, neither Comecon nor the Soviet Union as a 
major force within Comecon had supranational authority. Although 
this arrangement provided the lesser members some degree of free- 
dom from Soviet economic domination, it also deprived Comecon 
of the necessary power to achieve maximum economic efficiency. 



853 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

In 1989 the full members in Comecon consisted of Bulgaria, Cuba, 
Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), 
Hungary, Mongolia, Poland, Romania, the Soviet Union, and Viet- 
nam. (For the purposes of this appendix, the phrases the "six 
European members" or the "European members of Comecon" are 
used interchangeably to signify Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East 
Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania.) The primary docu- 
ments governing the objectives, organization, and functions of 
Comecon were the Charter (first adopted in 1959 and subsequendy 
amended; all references herein are to the amended 1974 text); the 
Comprehensive Program for the Further Extension and Improvement of Cooper- 
ation and the Further Development of Socialist Economic Integration by the 
Comecon Member Countries, adopted in 1971; and the Comprehensive 
Program for Scientific and Technical Cooperation to the Year 2000, adopted 
in December 1985. Adoption of the 1985 Comprehensive Program and 
the rise to power of Soviet general secretary Mikhail S. Gorbachev 
increased Soviet influence in Comecon operations and led to at- 
tempts to give Comecon some degree of supranational authority. 
The 1985 Comprehensive Program sought to improve economic cooper- 
ation through the development of a more efficient and intercon- 
nected scientific and technical base. 

Membership, Structure, Nature, and Scope 
Membership 

In a January 1949 meeting in Moscow, representatives of Bul- 
garia, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet 
Union reached the formal decision to establish the Council for 
Mutual Economic Assistance. The communique announcing the 
event cited the refusal of these countries to "subordinate them- 
selves to the dictates of the Marshall Plan" and their intention to 
resist the trade boycott imposed by "the United States, Britain, 
and certain other countries of Western Europe" as the major fac- 
tors contributing to the decision "to organize a more broadly based 
economic cooperation among the countries of the people's democ- 
racy and the USSR." 

Albania joined the six original members in February 1949, and 
East Germany entered Comecon in 1950. (Although it did not 
formally revoke its membership until 1987, Albania stopped par- 
ticipating in Comecon activities in 1961.) Mongolia acceded to 
membership in 1962, and in the 1970s Comecon expanded its mem- 
bership to include Cuba (1972) and Vietnam (1978). As of 1987, 
the ten full members consisted of the Soviet Union, the six East 
European countries, and the three extraregional members (see 
table A, this Appendix). 



854 



Appendix B 



Table A. National Participation in the Council for Mutual 
Economic Assistance (Comecon), 1989 



Member Countries 



Bulgaria (1949) 
Czechoslovakia (1949) 
Hungary (1949) 
Poland (1949) 
Romania (1949) 



Soviet Union (1949) 
East Germany (1950) 
Mongolia (1962) 
Cuba (1972) 
Vietnam (1978) 



Nonmember Countries with Close Ties to Comecon 



Countries that have concluded 
formal agreements of co- 
operation with Comecon: 



Countries that have attended 
Comecon sessions as observers: 



Yugoslavia (1964) 
Finland (1973) 
Iraq (1975) 
Mexico (1975) 
Nicaragua (1983) 
Mozambique (1985) 



Afghanistan 
Angola 
Ethiopia 
Laos 

South Yemen 



Countries that have had, at various 
times, other affiliations with Comecon: 



Algeria 

Benin 

Burma 

Congo 

Guinea 

Guinea-Bissau 

Madagascar 



Mali 

Nigeria 

Seychelles 

Syria 

Tanzania 

Zimbabwe 



Dates of accession are in parentheses. Albania joined Comecon in February 1949, one month after 
the organization was formed by the original six members. Albania stopped participating in Comecon 
activities in 1961 and formally revoked its membership in 1987. 



There were four kinds of relationships a country could have had 
with Comecon: full membership, associate membership, nonsocialist 
"cooperant" status, and ''observer country" status. Yugoslavia 
was the only country considered to have associate member status. 
Finland, Iraq, Mexico, Mozambique, and Nicaragua, had a non- 
socialist cooperant status with Comecon and, together with Yugo- 
slavia, had concluded formal agreements of cooperation with 
Comecon. Since 1957 Comecon has allowed certain countries with 
communist or pro- Soviet governments to attend sessions as observ- 
ers. Delegations from Afghanistan, Angola, Ethiopia, Laos, and 
the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (South Yemen) have 
attended Comecon sessions as observers. 



855 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 
Structure 

Although not formally part of the organization's hierarchy, the 
Conference of First Secretaries of Communist and Workers' Par- 
ties and of the Heads of Government of the Comecon Member 
Countries was, in fact, Comecon' s most important organ. These 
party and government leaders met regularly to discuss topics of 
mutual interest. Decisions made in these meetings had consider- 
able influence on the actions taken by Comecon and its organs. 

The official hierarchy of Comecon consisted of the Council 
Session, the Executive Committee, the Secretariat, four council 
committees, twenty-four standing commissions, six interstate con- 
ferences, two scientific institutes, and several associated organi- 
zations. 

The Council Session, officially the highest Comecon organ, ex- 
amined fundamental problems of socialist economic integration and 
directed the activities of the Secretariat and other subordinate or- 
ganizations. Delegations from each Comecon member country, 
usually headed by prime ministers, met in the second quarter of 
each year in a member country's capital. Each country appointed 
one permanent representative to maintain relations between mem- 
bers and Comecon between annual meetings. Extraordinary ses- 
sions were held with the consent of at least one- third of the members. 
Such meetings usually took place in Moscow. 

The highest executive organ in Comecon, the Executive Com- 
mittee, elaborated policy recommendations and supervised policy 
implementation between sessions. It also supervised plan coor- 
dination and scientific-technical cooperation. Composed of one 
representative from each member country, usually a deputy chair- 
man of the country's Council of Ministers, the Executive Com- 
mittee met quarterly, usually in Moscow. In 1971 and 1974, the 
Executive Committee acquired economic departments that ranked 
above the standing commissions. These economic departments con- 
siderably strengthened the authority and importance of the Execu- 
tive Committee. 

Four council committees were operational in 1987: the Council 
Committee for Cooperation in Planning, the Council Committee 
for Cooperation in Science and Technology, the Council Committee 
for Cooperation in Material and Technical Supply, and the Council 
Committee for Cooperation in Machine Building. Their mission 
was "to ensure the comprehensive examination and a multilateral 
settlement of the major problems of cooperation among mem- 
ber countries in the economy, science, and technology." All four 
committees were headquartered in Moscow and usually met there. 



856 



Appendix B 



These committees advised the standing commissions, the Secre- 
tariat, the interstate conferences, and the scientific institutes in their 
areas of specialization. Their jurisdiction was generally wider than 
that of the standing commissions because they were empowered 
to make policy recommendations to other Comecon organizations. 

The Council Committee for Cooperation in Planning was the 
most important of the four because it coordinated the national eco- 
nomic plans of Comecon members. As such, it ranked in impor- 
tance only below the Council Session and the Executive Committee. 
Made up of the chairmen of the Comecon members' national cen- 
tral planning offices, the Council Committee for Cooperation in 
Planning drew up draft agreements for joint projects, adopted reso- 
lutions approving these projects, and recommended approval to 
the concerned parties. 

The Secretariat, Comecon 's only permanent body, was the 
primary economic research and administrative organ. The secre- 
tary, who was always a Soviet official, was the official Comecon 
representative to Comecon member states, other states, and inter- 
national organizations. Subordinate to the secretary were his deputy 
and the various departments of the Secretariat, which generally 
corresponded to the standing commissions. The Secretariat's 
responsibilities included preparation and organization of Come- 
con sessions and other meetings conducted under the auspices of 
Comecon; compilation of digests on Comecon activities; economic 
and other research for Comecon members; and preparation of 
recommendations on various issues concerning Comecon oper- 
ations. 

In 1987 there were twenty-four standing commissions, set up 
to help Comecon make recommendations pertaining to specific eco- 
nomic sectors. The Secretariat supervised the actual operations of 
the commissions, which had authority only to make recommenda- 
tions, subject to the approval by the Executive Committee and ratifi- 
cation by the member countries involved. Commissions usually 
met twice a year in Moscow. 

The six interstate conferences (on water management, internal 
trade, legal matters, inventions and patents, pricing, and labor af- 
fairs) served as forums for discussing shared issues and experiences. 
They were purely consultative and generally acted in an advisory 
capacity to the Executive Committee or its specialized committees. 

The scientific institutes on standardization and on economic 
problems of the world socialist system (see Glossary) concerned 
themselves with theoretical problems of international cooperation. 
Both were headquartered in Moscow and were staffed by experts 
from various member countries. 



857 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Several affiliated agencies functioned outside the official Come- 
con hierarchy and served to develop "direct links between appro- 
priate bodies and organizations of Comecon member countries." 
These affiliated agencies were divided into two categories: inter- 
governmental economic organizations (which worked on a higher 
level in the member countries and generally dealt with a wider range 
of managerial and coordinative activities) and international eco- 
nomic organizations (which worked closer to the operational level 
of research, production, or trade). 

Nature of Operation 

Comecon was an interstate organization through which mem- 
bers attempted to coordinate economic activities of mutual interest 
and to develop multilateral economic, scientific, and technical 
cooperation. The Charter stated that "the sovereign equality of 
all members" was fundamental to the organization and procedures 
of Comecon. The 1971 Comprehensive Program emphasized that the 
processes of integration of members' economies were "completely 
voluntary and [did] not involve the creation of supranational bod- 
ies. " Hence, under the Charter each country had the right to equal 
representation and one vote in all organs of Comecon, regardless 
of the country's economic stature or its contribution to Comecon' s 
budget. 

The "interestedness" provisions of the Charter reinforced the 
principle of "sovereign equality." Comecon's recommendations 
and decisions could be adopted only upon agreement among the 
interested members, each of which had the right to declare its 
"interest" in any matter under consideration. Furthermore, in the 
words of the Charter, "recommendations and decisions shall not 
apply to countries that have declared that they have no interest 
in a particular matter." 

Although Comecon recognized the principle of unanimity, dis- 
interested parties did not have a veto but rather the right to ab- 
stain from participation. A declaration of disinterest could not block 
a project unless the disinterested party's participation was vital. 
Otherwise, the Charter implied that the interested parties could 
proceed without the abstaining member, and the abstaining coun- 
try could "subsequently adhere to the recommendations and de- 
cision adopted by the remaining members of the Council." 

Evolution 

Early Years 

During Comecon's early years (through 1955), its sessions were 
convened on an ad hoc basis. The organization lacked clear 



858 



Comecon headquarters, 
Moscow 




structure and operated without a charter until a decade after its 
founding. From 1949 to 1953, Comecon' s function consisted pri- 
marily of redirecting trade of member countries toward each other 
and introducing import-replacement industries, thus making mem- 
bers economically more self-sufficient. Little was done to solve eco- 
nomic problems through a regional policy. Because of Stalin's distrust 
of multilateral bodies, bilateral ties with the Soviet Union dominated 
the East European members' external relations. Each country dealt 
with the Soviet Union on a one-to-one basis. Although reparations 
transfers (extracted by the Soviet Union in the immediate postwar 
years from those East European states it regarded as former World 
War II enemies) had been replaced by more normal trade relations, 
outstanding reparations obligations were not halted until 1956. In 
these circumstances, there was scarcely the need nor the scope for 
multilateral policies or institutions. 

Rediscovery of Comecon after Stalin's Death 

After Stalin's death in 1953, the more industrialized and more 
trade dependent East European countries (Czechoslovakia, East 
Germany, and Poland) sought relief from their economic isolation 
in new forms of regional cooperation. For countries with small, 
centrally planned economies, this meant the need to develop a 
mechanism through which to coordinate investment and trade 
policies. 



859 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

In the 1950s, instability in Eastern Europe and integration in 
Western Europe increased the desirability of regularizing relations 
among the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in a more elaborate 
institutional framework. The 1955 Treaty of Friendship, Cooper- 
ation, and Mutual Assistance, which established the Warsaw Pact, 
and its implementing machinery reinforced political-military links 
(see Appendix C). On the economic front, Comecon was redis- 
covered. 

Rapid Growth in Comecon Activity, 1956-63 

The years 1956 to 1963 witnessed the rapid growth of Comecon 
institutions and activities. Comecon, for example, launched a pro- 
gram to unify the electrical power systems of its member states and 
in 1962 created the Central Dispatching Board to manage the uni- 
fied system. The organization took similar steps to coordinate rail- 
road and river transport. In 1963 a special bank, the International 
Bank for Economic Cooperation, was created to facilitate finan- 
cial settlements among members. In this period, Comecon also 
undertook a number of bilateral and multilateral investment 
projects. The most notable project led to the coordinated construc- 
tion of the Friendship (Druzhba) oil pipeline for the transport and 
distribution of crude oil from the Soviet Union to Eastern Europe. 
The joint Institute for Nuclear Research, established in 1956, in- 
itiated cooperation in another area of long-term importance. 

Parallel to these developments, the Soviet Union led efforts to 
coordinate the investment strategies of the members in the interest 
of a more rational pattern of regional specialization, increased 
productivity, and a more rapid overtaking of the capitalist econo- 
mies. These efforts culminated in 1962 with the adoption at the 
Fifteenth Council Session of the Basic Principles of the International 
Socialist Division of Labor, which called for increased economic inter- 
dependence. Furthermore, Soviet party leader Nikita S. Khru- 
shchev proposed a central Comecon planning organ to implement 
the Basic Principles and to pave the way for a ' ' socialist common- 
wealth" based on a unified regional economy. 

These proposals provoked strong objection from Romania, which 
charged that they violated the principle of the "sovereign equal- 
ity" of members. Romania's opposition (combined with the more 
passive resistance of some other members) deterred supranational 
planning and reinforced the interested-party provisions of the 
Charter. The institutional compromise was the creation of the 
Bureau for Integrated Planning, which was attached to the Exec- 
utive Committee and limited to an advisory role on the coordination 



860 



Appendix B 



of members' development plans. The Basic Principles were super- 
seded several years later by the 1971 Comprehensive Program. 

Inactivity and Subsequent Revitalization in the Late 1960s 

After the fall of Khrushchev in 1964, a comparative lull in Come- 
con activities ensued, which lasted until well after the 1968 Soviet- 
led intervention in Czechoslovakia. By the end of the 1960s, Eastern 
Europe, shaken by the 1968 events, recognized the need to revitalize 
programs that would strengthen regional cohesion. Disillusioned 
by traditional methods and concerned with the need to decentral- 
ize planning and management in their domestic economies, reform- 
ers argued for strengthening market relations among Comecon 
states. Conservatives, however, continued to advocate planned ap- 
proaches that would involve supranational planning of major aspects 
of members' economies and the inevitable loss of national control 
over domestic investment policy. 

The 1971 Comprehensive Program 

The controversy over supranational planning led to a compromise 
in the form of the 1971 Comprehensive Program, which laid the guide- 
lines for Comecon activity through 1990. The program incorpo- 
rated elements of both market and planned approaches. From the 
former, the program advocated a stronger role for money, prices, 
and exchange rates in intra-Comecon relations and incentives for 
direct contacts among lower level economic entities. From the lat- 
ter, the program called for more joint planning on a sectoral basis 
through interstate coordinating bodies for activities in a given sec- 
tor. In addition, international associations would engage in actual 
operations in a designated sector on behalf of the participating coun- 
tries. Finally, the program emphasized the need for multilateral 
projects to develop new regional sources of fuels, energy, and raw 
materials. Such projects were to be jointly planned, financed, and 
executed. 

The 1971 Comprehensive Program introduced a new concept in rela- 
tions among members: ' ' socialist economic integration," whose 
aim was "to intensify and improve" cooperation among members. 
The program avoided, however, the suggestion of ultimate fusion 
of members' economies that had been contained in the 1962 Basic 
Principles. It set limits on the integrative process in the following 
terms: "Socialist economic integration is completely voluntary and 
does not involve the creation of supranational bodies." 

Comecon members adopted the 1971 Comprehensive Program at 
a time when they were actively developing economic relations with 
the rest of the world, especially with the industrialized Western 



861 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

economies. The program viewed the two sets of policies as com- 
plementary and affirmed that "because the international socialist 
division of labor is effected with due account taken of the world 
division of labor, the Comecon member countries shall continue 
to develop economic, scientific, and technological ties with other 
countries, irrespective of their social and political system." 

In the years following the adoption of the 1971 Comprehensive Pro- 
gram, Comecon made some progress toward strengthening mar- 
ket relations among its members. The objectives of the program 
proved somewhat inconsistent with the predominant trends within 
members' economies in the 1970s, which was a period of recen- 
tralization — rather than decentralization — of domestic systems of 
planning and management. The major exception to this lack of 
progress lay in the area of intra-Comecon pricing and payment, 
where the expansion of relations with the West contributed to the 
adoption of prices and extra-plan settlements closer to international 
norms. 

A number of projects formulated in the years immediately fol- 
lowing the adoption of the 1971 Comprehensive Program were assem- 
bled in a document signed at the Twenty-Ninth Council Session 
in 1975. Entitled the Concerted Plan for Multilateral Integration Mea- 
sures, the document covered the 1976-80 five-year-plan period and 
was proclaimed as the first general plan for the Comecon econo- 
mies. The joint projects included in the plan were largely completed 
in the course of the plan period. 

By the end of the 1970s, with the exception of Poland's agricul- 
tural sector, the economic sectors of all Comecon countries had 
converted to the socialist system. Member states had restructured 
their economies to emphasize industry, transportation, communi- 
cations, material, and technical supply, and they had decreased 
the share of resources devoted to agricultural development. Within 
industry, member states devoted additional funds to machine build- 
ing and the production of chemicals. Socialist economic integra- 
tion resulted in the production of goods capable of competing on 
the world market. 

The 1980s 

Most Comecon countries ended their 1981-85 five-year plans 
with decreased extensive economic development (see Glossary), in- 
creased expenses for fuel and raw materials, and decreased depen- 
dency on the West for both credit and hard-currency (see Glossary) 
imports. The sharp rise in interest rates in the West resulted in 
a liquidity shortage (see Glossary) in all Comecon countries in the 
early 1980s and forced them to reduce hard-currency imports. High 



862 



Appendix B 



interest rates and the increased value of the United States dollar 
on international markets made debt servicing more expensive. 
Thus, reducing indebtedness to the West also became a top pri- 
ority within Comecon. From 1981 to 1985, the European mem- 
bers of Comecon attempted to promote the faster growth of exports 
over imports and sought to strengthen intraregional trade, build 
up an increased trade surplus, and decrease indebtedness to Western 
countries. 

In the 1980s, Comecon sessions were held on their regular an- 
nual schedule. The two most notable meetings were the special 
sessions called in June 1984 and December 1985. The first summit- 
level meeting of Comecon member states in fifteen years was held 
with much fanfare June 12-14, 1984, in Moscow. The two fun- 
damental objectives of the meeting were to strengthen unity among 
members and to establish a closer connection between the produc- 
tion base, scientific and technological progress, and capital con- 
struction. Despite the introduction of proposals for improving 
efficiency and cooperation in six key areas, analysts from East and 
West considered the meeting a failure. 

The ideas and results of the June 14 session were elaborated at 
a special session held December 17-18, 1985, in Moscow. This spe- 
cial session featured the culmination of several years of work on 
the new Comprehensive Program for Scientific and Technical Cooperation 
to the Year 2000. It aimed to create "a firm base for working out 
an agreed and, in some areas, unified scientific and technical pol- 
icy and the practical implementation, in the common interest, of 
higher achievements in science and technology." 

The 1985 Comprehensive Program laid out sizable tasks in five key 
areas: electronics, automation systems, nuclear energy, develop- 
ment of new materials, and biotechnology. It sought to restruc- 
ture and modernize the member states' economies to counteract 
constraints on labor and material supplies. The need to move to 
intensive production techniques within Comecon was evident from 
the fact that from 1961 to 1984 the overall material intensiveness 
of production did not improve substantially. 

Cooperation under the 1971 Comprehensive Program 

The distinction between "market" relations and "planned" re- 
lations made in the discussions within Comecon prior to the adop- 
tion of the 1971 Comprehensive Program remained important in 
subsequent Comecon activities. Comecon was in fact a mixed sys- 
tem, combining elements of both planned and market economies. 
Although official rhetoric emphasized regional planning, intra- 
Comecon relations were conducted among national entities not 



863 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

governed by any supranational authority. They thus interacted on 
a decentralized basis according to terms negotiated in bilateral and 
multilateral agreements on trade and cooperation. 

Market Relations and Instruments 

The size of the Soviet economy determined that intra-Comecon 
trade was dominated by exchanges between the Soviet Union and 
the other members. Exchanges of Soviet fuels and raw materials 
for capital goods and consumer manufactures characterized trade, 
particularly among the original members. The liquidity shortage 
in the early 1980s forced the European members of Comecon to 
work to strengthen intraregional trade. In the early 1980s, intra- 
regional trade rose to 60 percent of foreign trade of Comecon coun- 
tries as a whole; for individual members it ranged from 45 to 50 
percent in the case of Hungary, Romania, and the Soviet Union, 
to 83 percent for Cuba, and to 96 percent for Mongolia. 

Trade among the members was negotiated on an annual basis 
and in considerable detail at the governmental level and was then 
followed up by contracts between enterprises (see Glossary). Early 
Comecon efforts to facilitate trade among members concentrated 
on the development of uniform technical, legal, and statistical stan- 
dards and on the encouragement of long-term trade agreements. 
The 1971 Comprehensive Program sought to liberalize the system some- 
what by recommending broad limits on "fixed-quota" trade among 
members (trade subject to quantitative or value targets set by bi- 
lateral trade agreements). There is no evidence, however, to indi- 
cate that quota-free trade grew in importance under the program. 

Prices 

The 1971 Comprehensive Program also called for improvement in 
the Comecon system of foreign trade prices. Administratively set 
prices, such as those used in intra-Comecon trade, did not reflect 
costs or relative scarcities of inputs and outputs. For this reason, 
intra-Comecon trade was based on world market prices. By 1971 
a price system governing exchanges among members had devel- 
oped, under which prices agreed on through negotiation were fixed 
for five-year periods. These contract prices were based on adjusted 
world market prices averaged over the immediately preceding five 
years. Under this system, therefore, intra-Comecon prices could 
and did depart substantially from relative prices on world markets. 

Although the possibility of breaking this tenuous link with world 
prices and developing an indigenous system of prices for the Come- 
con market had been discussed in the 1960s, Comecon prices 
evolved in the opposite direction after 1971. Far from a technical 



864 



Appendix B 



or academic matter, the question of prices underlay vital issues of 
the terms and gains of intra-Comecon trade. In particular, rela- 
tive to actual world prices, intra-Comecon prices in the early 1970s 
penalized exporters of raw materials and benefited exporters of 
manufactures. After the oil price explosion of 1973, Comecon for- 
eign trade prices swung further away from world prices to the dis- 
advantage of Comecon suppliers of raw materials, in particular the 
Soviet Union. In view of the extraregional opportunities opened 
up by the expansion of East-West trade, this yawning gap between 
Comecon and world prices could no longer be ignored. Hence in 
1975, at Soviet instigation, the system of intra-Comecon pricing 
was reformed. 

The reform involved a substantial modification of existing proce- 
dures (known as the "Bucharest formula"), but not their aban- 
donment. Under the modified Bucharest formula, prices were fixed 
every year and were based on a moving average of world prices 
for the preceding five years. The world-price base of the Bucharest 
formula was thus retained and still represented an average of ad- 
justed world prices for the preceding five years. For 1975 alone, 
however, the average was for the preceding three years. Under these 
arrangements, intra-Comecon prices were more closely linked with 
world prices than before, and throughout the remainder of the 1970s 
they rose with world prices, although lagging behind them. Until 
the early 1980s, this new system benefited both the Soviet Union 
and the other Comecon countries since Soviet oil, priced with the 
lagged formula, was considerably cheaper than oil from the 
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which 
charged drastically higher prices in the 1970s. By 1983-84 this sys- 
tem turned to the Soviet Union's advantage because world mar- 
ket oil prices began to fall, whereas the lagged Soviet oil prices 
continued to rise. 

Exchange Rates and Currencies 

Basic features of the state trading systems of the Comecon coun- 
tries were multiple exchange rates and comprehensive exchange 
controls that severely restricted the convertibility of members' cur- 
rencies. These features were rooted in the planned character of the 
members' economies and their systems of administered prices. Cur- 
rency inconvertibility in turn dictated bilateral balancing of ac- 
counts, one of the basic objectives of intergovernmental trade 
agreements among members. As of mid- 1989, the transferable ruble 
remained an artificial currency functioning as an accounting unit 
and was not a common instrument for multilateral settlement. For 



865 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

this reason, this currency continued to be termed "transferable" 
and not "convertible." 

The member countries recognized that the multiplicity and in- 
consistency of their administered exchange rates, the separation 
of their domestic prices from foreign prices, and the inconvertibil- 
ity of their currencies were significant obstacles to multilateral trade 
and cooperation. In 1989 Comecon lacked not only a flexible means 
of payment but also a meaningful, standard unit of account. Both 
problems vastly complicated the already complex multilateral 
projects and programs envisaged by the 1971 Comprehensive Program. 
The creation in 1971 of the International Investment Bank provided 
a mechanism for joint investment financing, but, like the Interna- 
tional Bank for Economic Cooperation, this institution could not 
by itself resolve these fundamental monetary problems. 

Recognizing that money and credit should play a more active 
role in the Comecon system, the 1971 Comprehensive Program estab- 
lished a timetable for the improvement of monetary relations. Ac- 
cording to the timetable, measures would be taken "to strengthen 
and extend" the functions of the "collective currency" (the trans- 
ferable ruble) and "to make the transferable ruble convertible into 
national currencies and to make national currencies mutually con- 
vertible." To this end, steps would be taken to introduce "eco- 
nomically well-founded and mutually coordinated" rates of 
exchange between members' currencies and between 1976 and 1979 
to prepare the groundwork for the introduction by 1 980 of a " sin- 
gle rate of exchange for the national currency of every country." 
This timetable was not met. Only in Hungary were the conditions 
for convertibility gradually being introduced by reforms intended 
to link domestic prices more directly to world prices. 

Cooperation in Planning 

Since the early 1960s, official Comecon documents have stressed 
the need for a more cost-effective pattern of specialization in produc- 
tion. Especially in the manufacturing sector, this "international 
socialist division of labor" would involve specialization within major 
branches of industry. In the absence of significant, decentralized 
allocation of resources within these economies, however, produc- 
tion specialization could be achieved only through the mechanism 
of the national plan and the investment decisions incorporated in 
it. In the absence at the regional level of supranational planning 
bodies, a rational pattern of production specialization among mem- 
bers' economies required coordination of national economic plans, 
a process that posed inescapable political problems. 



866 



Appendix B 



The coordination of national five-year economic plans was the 
most traditional form of cooperation among the members in the 
area of planning. Although the process of consultation underlying 
plan coordination remained essentially bilateral, Comecon organs 
were indirectly involved. The standing commissions drew up 
proposals for consideration by competent, national planning bod- 
ies; the Secretariat assembled information on the results of bilateral 
consultations; and the Council Committee for Cooperation in Plan- 
ning (created by Comecon in 1971 at the same session at which 
the Comprehensive Program was adopted) reviewed the progress of 
plan coordination by members. 

In principle, plan coordination covered all economic sectors. Ef- 
fective and comprehensive plan coordination was significantly 
impeded, however, by the continued momentum of earlier parallel 
development strategies and the desire of members to minimize the 
risks of mutual dependence (especially given the uncertainties of 
supply that were characteristic of the members' economies). Plan 
coordination in practice, therefore, remained for the most part lim- 
ited to mutual adjustment, through bilateral consultation, of the 
foreign trade sectors of national five-year plans. Under the 1971 
Comprehensive Program, there were renewed efforts to extend plan 
coordination beyond foreign trade to the spheres of production, 
investment, science, and technology. 

Plan Coordination 

According to the 1971 Comprehensive Program, joint planning — 
multilateral or bilateral — was to be limited to "interested coun- 
tries' ' and was "not to interfere with the autonomy of internal plan- 
ning." Participating countries were to retain, moreover, national 
ownership of the productive capacities and resources jointly 
planned. 

The Comprehensive Program did not clearly assign responsibility 
for joint planning to any single agency. On the one hand, "coor- 
dination of work concerned with joint planning [was to] be car- 
ried out by the central planning bodies of Comecon member 
countries or their authorized representatives. " On the other hand, 
"decisions on joint, multilateral planning of chosen branches and 
lines of production by interested countries [were to] be based on 
proposals by countries or Comecon agencies and [were to] be made 
by the Comecon Executive Committee, which also [was to deter- 
mine] the Comecon agencies responsible for the organization of 
such work." Finally, mutual commitments resulting from joint 
planning and other aspects of cooperation were to be incorporated 
in agreements signed by the interested parties. 



867 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

It is extremely difficult to gauge the implementation of plan coor- 
dination or joint planning under the 1971 Comprehensive Program or 
to assess the activities of the diverse international economic organi- 
zations. There is no single, adequate measure of such cooperation. 
The results were inconclusive, at best. 

Joint Projects 

The clearest area of achievement under the 1971 Comprehensive 
Program was the joint exploitation and development of natural 
resources for the economies of the member countries. Particular 
attention was given to energy and fuels, forest industries, and iron 
and steel and various other metals and minerals. Most of this ac- 
tivity was carried out in the Soviet Union, the great storehouse 
of natural resources within Comecon. 

Joint development projects were usually organized on a "com- 
pensation" basis, a form of investment "in kind." Participating 
members advanced materials, equipment, and manpower and were 
repaid through scheduled deliveries of the output resulting from, 
or distributed through, the new facility. Repayment included a 
modest "fraternal" rate of interest, but the real financial return 
to the participating countries depended on the value of the output 
at the time of delivery. Deliveries at contract prices below world 
prices provided an important extra return. No doubt the most im- 
portant advantage from participation in joint projects, however, 
was the guarantee of long-term access to basic fuels and raw materi- 
als in a world of increasing uncertainty about the supply of such 
products. 

The Concerted Plan 

The multilateral development projects concluded under the 1971 
Comprehensive Program formed the backbone of Comecon 's Concerted 
Plan for the 1976-80 period. The program allotted 9 billion rubles 
(nearly US$12 billion at the official 1975 exchange rate of US$1.30 
per ruble) for joint investments. The Orenburg project was the larg- 
est project under the Comprehensive Program. It was undertaken by 
all East European Comecon countries and the Soviet Union at an 
estimated cost ranging from the equivalent of US$5 billion to US$6 
billion, or about half the cost of all Comecon projects under the 
Concerted Plan. It consisted of a natural gas production facility at 
Orenburg in western Siberia and the 2,677-kilometer Union (Soiuz) 
natural gas pipeline, completed in 1978, linking the Orenburg fa- 
cility to the western border of the Soviet Union. Construction of 
a pulp mill in Ust' Ilimsk (in eastern Siberia) was the other major 
project under this program. 



868 



Appendix B 



These two projects differed from other joint Comecon invest- 
ment projects in that they were jointly planned and jointly built 
in the host country (the Soviet Union in both cases). Although the 
other projects were jointly planned, each country was responsible 
only for construction within its own borders. Western technology, 
equipment, and financing played a considerable role. 

The early 1980s were characterized by more bilateral investment 
specialization but on a much smaller scale than required for the 
Orenburg and Ust' Ilimsk projects. In these latter projects, Eastern 
Europe provided machinery and equipment for Soviet multilateral 
resource development. 

Cooperation in Science and Technology 

To supplement national efforts to upgrade indigenous technol- 
ogy, the 1971 Comprehensive Program emphasized cooperation in 
science and technology. The development of new technology was 
envisioned as a major object of cooperation; collaboration in 
resource development and specialization in production were to be 
facilitated by transfers of technology between members. The 1971 
Comecon session, which adopted the Comprehensive Program, decided 
to establish the Council Committee for Cooperation in Science and 
Technology to ensure the organization and fulfillment of the pro- 
visions of the program in this area. Jointly planned and coordi- 
nated research programs extended to the creation of joint research 
institutes and centers. In terms of the number of patents, docu- 
ments, and other scientific and technical information exchanges, 
the available data indicate that the Soviet Union has been the 
dominant source of technology within Comecon. On the whole, 
it provided more technology to its East European partners than 
it received from them. Soviet science also formed the base for several 
high-technology programs for regional specialization and cooper- 
ation, such as nuclear power and computers. 

The 1985 Comprehensive Program, adopted in December, was in- 
tended to boost cooperation in science and technology. Under this 
program, enterprises and research institutes were established 
throughout the East European member countries and assigned par- 
ticular research and development tasks. Each project was headed, 
however, by a Soviet organization, which awarded contracts to other 
Comecon member organizations. The Soviet project heads, who 
were not responsible to domestic planners, were given extensive 
executive powers of their own and closely supervised all activities. 
The program represented a fundamentally new approach to multi- 
lateral collaboration and a first step toward investing Comecon with 
some supranational authority. Genuine economic benefits of this 



869 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

program were marginal, however, since prices and exchange rates 
were artificially set and currencies remained mutually inconvert- 
ible. 

Labor Resources 

Just as the 1971 Comprehensive Program stimulated investment flows 
and technology transfers among members, it also increased intra- 
Comecon flows of another important factor of production: labor. 
Most of the transfers occurred in connection with joint resource 
development projects, such as Bulgarian workers aiding in the ex- 
ploitation of Siberian forest resources or Vietnamese workers help- 
ing on the Friendship pipeline in the Soviet Union. Labor was also 
transferred in response to labor imbalances in member countries. 
Hungarian workers, for example, were sent to work in East Ger- 
many under a bilateral agreement between the two countries. Such 
transfers, however, were restricted by the universal scarcity of labor 
that emerged with the industrialization of the less developed Come- 
con countries. Moreover, the presence of foreign workers raised 
practical and ideological issues in socialist planned economies. 

Power Configurations Within Comecon 

The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe 

Between Comecon 's creation in 1949 and the anticommunist 
revolutions in 1989, the relationship between the Soviet Union and 
the six East European countries generally remained stable. The 
Soviet Union provided fuel, nonfood raw materials, and semi- 
finished (hard) goods to Eastern Europe, which in turn supplied 
the Soviet Union with finished machinery and industrial consumer 
(soft) goods. 

This kind of economic relationship stemmed from a genuine need 
by the Comecon members in the 1950s. Eastern Europe has poor 
energy and mineral resources, a problem exacerbated by the low 
energy efficiency of East European industry. As of mid- 1985, fac- 
tories in Eastern Europe still used 40 percent more fuel than those 
in the West. As a result of these factors, East European countries 
have always relied heavily on the Soviet Union for oil. For its part, 
in the 1950s Eastern Europe supplied the Soviet Union with goods 
otherwise unavailable because of Western embargoes. Thus, from 
the early 1950s to the early 1970s, during the time when there was 
no world shortage of energy and raw materials, the Soviet Union 
inexpensively supplied its East European clients with hard goods 
in exchange for finished machinery and equipment. In addition, 
Soviet economic policies bought political and military support. Dur- 
ing these years, the Soviet Union could be assured of relative 



870 



Appendix B 



political tranquillity within Eastern Europe, obedience in interna- 
tional strategy as laid down by the Soviet Union, and military sup- 
port of Soviet aims. By the 1980s, the members of Comecon were 
accustomed to this arrangement. The Soviet Union was particu- 
larly happy with the arrangement because it still could expand its 
energy and raw materials sector quickly and relatively cheaply. 

Mongolia, Cuba, and Vietnam 

Soviet-initiated Comecon support for Comecon's three least- 
developed members — Cuba, Mongolia, and Vietnam — clearly 
benefited them, but the burden on the six East European Come- 
con members was most unwelcome. Comecon was structured in 
such a way that the more economically developed members provided 
support for the less developed members in their major economic 
sectors. Initially, the addition of Mongolia in 1962 brought no great 
added burden. The population of Mongolia was relatively small 
(1 million), and the country's subsidies came primarily from the 
Soviet Union. The addition of Cuba (9 million people) in 1972 
and Vietnam (40 million people) in 1978, however, quickly esca- 
lated the burden. In 1987 three-fourths of Comecon's overseas eco- 
nomic aid went to Cuba, Mongolia, and Vietnam. 

Comecon had invested heavily in Mongolia, Cuba, and Viet- 
nam; and the three countries benefited substantially from these 
resources. In 1984 increases in capital investments within Come- 
con were highest for Vietnam and Cuba (26.9 percent for Viet- 
nam and 14 percent for Cuba, compared with 3.3 percent and less 
for the others, except Poland and Romania). Increased investments 
in Mongolia lagged behind those in Poland and Romania but were 
nevertheless substantial (5.8 percent). In 1984 the economies of 
the three developing countries registered the fastest industrial growth 
of all the Comecon members. 

Given their locations, Comecon membership for Mongolia, 
Cuba, and Vietnam served principally to advance Soviet foreign 
policy interests. Among the Comecon members, the Soviet Union 
contributed the most to the development of the three poorer Come- 
con members, and it also reaped most of the benefits. The Soviet 
Union imported most of Cuba's sugar and nickel and all of Mon- 
golia's copper and molybdenum (widely used in the construction 
of aircraft, automobiles, machine tools, gas turbines, and in the 
field of electronics). In return, Cuba provided bases for the Soviet 
Naval Forces and military support to Soviet allies in Africa. Viet- 
nam made its naval and air bases, as well as some 100,000 guest 
workers, available to the Soviet Union. 



871 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Support for Developing Countries 

Comecon provided economic and technical support to 34 
developing countries in 1960, 62 developing countries in 1970, and 
over 100 developing countries in 1985. As of 1987, Comecon had 
assisted in the construction or preparation of over 4,000 projects 
(mostly industrial) in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. A mone- 
tary figure for this assistance is difficult to estimate, although a June 
1986 Czechoslovak source valued the exchange between Comecon 
and developing countries at 34 billion rubles per year (US$48.3 
billion at the official June 1986 exchange rate of US$1 .42 per ruble). 
The precise nature of this aid was unclear, and Western observers 
believe the data to be inflated. 

From the 1960s to the mid-1980s, Comecon sought to encourage 
the development of industry, energy, transportation, mineral re- 
sources, and agriculture of Third World countries. Comecon coun- 
tries also provided technical and economic training for personnel 
in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. When Comecon initially lent 
support to developing countries, it generally concentrated on de- 
veloping those products that would support the domestic econo- 
mies of the Third World, including replacements for imports. In 
the 1970s and 1980s, assistance from Comecon was directed toward 
export-oriented industries. Third World countries paid for this sup- 
port with products made by the project for which Comecon ren- 
dered help. This policy gave Comecon a stable source of necessary 
deliveries in addition to political influence in these strategically im- 
portant areas. 

Trends and Prospects 

Comecon served for more than three decades as a framework 
for cooperation among the planned economies of the Soviet Union, 
its allies in Eastern Europe, and Soviet allies in the Third World. 
Over the years, the Comecon system grew steadily in scope and 
experience. 

This institutional evolution reflected changing and expanding 
goals. Initial, modest objectives of "exchanging experience" and 
providing ' 'technical assistance" and other forms of "mutual aid' ' 
were extended to the development of an integrated set of econo- 
mies based on a coordinated international pattern of production 
and investment. These ambitious goals were pursued through a 
broad spectrum of cooperative measures extending from monetary 
to technological relations. 

At the same time, the extraregional goals of the organization also 
expanded; other countries, both geographically distant and sys- 
temically different, were encouraged to participate in Comecon 



872 



Appendix B 



activities. Parallel efforts sought to develop Comecon as a mecha- 
nism through which to coordinate the foreign economic policies 
of the members as well as their actual relations with nonmember 
countries and with such organizations as the European Economic 
Community (EEC) and the United Nations. 

Asymmetries of size and differences in levels of development 
among Comecon members deeply affected the institutional character 
and evolution of the organization. The overwhelming dominance 
of the Soviet economy necessarily meant that the bulk of intra- 
Comecon relations took the form of bilateral relations between the 
Soviet Union and the smaller members of Comecon. 

The planned nature of the members' economies and the lack of 
effective market-price mechanisms to facilitate integration hindered 
progress toward Comecon goals. Without the automatic workings 
of market forces, progress depended upon conscious acts of pol- 
icy. This fact tended to politicize the processes of integration to 
a greater degree than was the case in countries with market 
economies. 

By 1987 Comecon's 1971 Comprehensive Program had undergone 
considerable change. Multilateral planning faded into traditional 
bilateral cooperation, and the Bucharest formula for prices assumed 
a revised form. The 1985 Comprehensive Program or, as some Western 
analysts call it, the "Gorbachev Charter," became Comecon's new 
blueprint for taking a firm grip on its future. The purpose of the 
1985 program was to offset centrifugal forces and reduce Come- 
con's vulnerability to "technological blackmail" through broadened 
mutual cooperation, increased efficiency of cooperation, and im- 
proved quality of output. 

Additional progress in this direction was made at the Forty-Third 
Council Session held in Moscow in October 1987 and the Forty- 
Fourth Council Session held in Prague in July 1988. As a result 
of these sessions, all Comecon members, with the exception of 
Romania, reached an agreement on the necessity within Come- 
con of a "unified market," which would lead to the "free move- 
ment of goods, services, and other production factors." They also 
agreed to work toward a genuine multilateral convertibility of their 
currencies, recognizing, nevertheless, that achievement of such a 
goal was some ten to fifteen years in the future. 

Members attending the Forty-Third Council Session also agreed 
to changes in Comecon's organizational structure. Some Come- 
con bodies were abolished, others were reorganized or merged, and 
new bodies were created. The aim of these changes was to stream- 
line and improve their performance. At the same time, however, 
as meaningful changes were being made within Comecon, the 



873 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

rapidly changing political climate of Eastern Europe and the pres- 
sure for economic reforms within each of the Comecon member 
states were not only threatening the unity of Comecon but also rais- 
ing serious doubts about any further need for its existence. 

* * * 

Although the selection is still rather sparse, several English- 
language works on Comecon appeared in the early 1980s. Socialist 
Economic Integration by Jozef M. van Brabant discusses in great de- 
tail the mechanisms and operations of socialist economic integra- 
tion in general and Comecon in particular. It is perhaps the most 
comprehensive English-language work on the subject. Analysis of 
Comecon 's operations and development in the modern economic 
and political arena is provided in Paul Marer's "The Political Econ- 
omy of Soviet Relations with Eastern Europe." The best sources 
for up-to-date political and economic analysis are the Radio Free 
Europe background reports. Articles by Vladimir Sobell, in par- 
ticular, provide useful information about the 1985 Comprehensive 
Program. 

Russian-language sources provide useful information on Come- 
con procedures and structure in addition to insight into the Soviet 
and East European view of Comecon 's goals and shortcomings. 
Articles in this vein can be found in Voprosy ekonomiki and in Eko- 
nomika. Translations of selected articles from these publications can 
be found in the Joint Publications Research Service's USSR Report 
on Economic Affairs. The Comecon Secretariat publishes a bimonthly 
bulletin {Ekonomicheskoe sotrudnichestvo stran-chlenov SEV), which has 
a table of contents and a summary in English; the annual Statis- 
ticheskii ezhegodnik stran-chlenov SEV; and various handbooks. (For 
further information and complete citations, see Bibliography.) 



874 



Appendix C 



The Warsaw Pact 

THE POLITICAL AND MILITARY ALLIANCE of the Soviet 
Union and East European socialist states, known as the Warsaw 
Pact, was formed in 1955 as a counterweight to the North Atlantic 
Treaty Organization (NATO), created in 1949. During much of 
its early existence, the Warsaw Pact essentially functioned as part 
of the Soviet Ministry of Defense. In fact, in the early years of its 
existence the Warsaw Pact served as one of the Soviet Union's 
primary mechanisms for keeping its East European allies under 
its political and military control. The Soviet Union used the War- 
saw Pact to erect a facade of collective decisions and actions around 
the reality of its political domination and military intervention in 
the internal affairs of its allies. At the same time, the Soviet Union 
also used the Warsaw Pact to develop East European socialist armies 
and harness them to its military strategy and security policy. 

Since its inception, the Warsaw Pact reflected the changing pat- 
tern of Soviet-East European relations and manifested problems 
that affect all alliances. The Warsaw Pact evolved into something 
other than the mechanism of control the Soviet Union originally 
intended it (to be and, since the 1960s, became less dominated by 
the Soviet Union. Thus, in 1962 Albania stopped participating in 
Warsaw Pact activities and formally withdrew from the alliance 
in 1968. The organizational structure of the Warsaw Pact also 
provided a forum for greater intra- alliance debate, bargaining, and 
conflict between the Soviet Union and its allies over the issues of 
national independence, policy autonomy, and East European par- 
ticipation in alliance decision making. At the same time that the 
Warsaw Pact retained its internal function in Soviet-East Euro- 
pean relations, its non-Soviet members developed sufficient mili- 
tary capabilities to become useful adjuncts of Soviet power against 
NATO in Europe (see fig. A, this Appendix). 

The Soviet Alliance System, 1943-55 

Long before the establishment of the Warsaw Pact in 1955, the 
Soviet Union had molded the East European states into an alli- 
ance serving its security interests. While liberating Eastern Europe 
from Nazi Germany in World War II, the Red Army (see Glos- 
sary) established political and military control over that region. The 
Soviet Union intended to use Eastern Europe as a buffer zone for 



875 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 




Figure A. The Warsaw Pact Member States, 1989 



876 



Appendix C 



the forward defense of its western borders and to keep threatening 
ideological influences at bay. Continued control of Eastern Europe 
became second only to defense of the homeland in the hierarchy 
of Soviet security priorities. 

The Red Army began to form, train, and arm Polish and 
Czechoslovak national units on Soviet territory in 1943. These units 
fought with the Red Army as it carried its offensive westward into 
German-occupied Poland and Czechoslovakia and then into Ger- 
many itself. By 1943 the Red Army had destroyed the Bulgarian, 
Hungarian, and Romanian forces fighting alongside the German 
armed forces. Shortly thereafter it began the process of transform- 
ing the remnants of their armies into allied units that could re-enter 
the war on the side of the Soviet Union. Red Army political officers 
(zampoliti — see Glossary) organized extensive indoctrination pro- 
grams in the allied units under Soviet control and purged any po- 
litically suspect personnel. In all, the Soviet Union formed and 
armed more than twenty-nine divisions and thirty-seven brigades 
and regiments, which included more than 500,000 East European 
troops. 

The allied national formations were directly subordinate to the 
headquarters of the Soviet Union's Supreme High Command and 
its executive body, the General Staff of the Armed Forces. Although 
the Soviet Union directly commanded all allied units, the Supreme 
High Command included one representative from each of the East 
European forces. Lacking authority, these representatives simply 
relayed directives from the Supreme High Command and Gen- 
eral Staff to the commanders of East European units. While all 
national units had so-called Soviet advisers, some Red Army officers 
openly discharged command and staff responsibilities in the East 
European armies. Even when commanded by East European 
officers, non-Soviet contingents participated in operations against 
the German armed forces only as part of Soviet fronts. 

By the end of World War IT , the Red Army (renamed the Soviet 
army after the war) occupied Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Poland, 
significant portions of Czechoslovakia, and eastern Germany, and 
Soviet front commanders headed the Allied Control Commission 
in each of these occupied countries. The Soviet Union gave its most 
important occupation forces a garrison status when it established 
the Northern Group of Forces in 1947 and the Group of Soviet 
Forces in Germany in 1949. By 1949 the Soviet Union had con- 
cluded twenty-year bilateral treaties of friendship, cooperation, and 
mutual assistance with Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, 
and Romania, which granted the Soviet Union rights to a continued 
military presence on their territory. The continued presence of 



877 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Soviet armed forces guaranteed Soviet control of these countries. 
The East European satellite regimes depended entirely on Soviet 
military power — and the continued deployment of 1 million Soviet 
soldiers — to stay in power. In return, the new East European po- 
litical and military elites were obliged to respect Soviet political 
and security interests in the region. By contrast, the Soviet Union 
did not occupy either Albania or Yugoslavia during or after the 
war, and both countries remained outside direct Soviet control. 

In the late 1940s and the 1950s, the Soviet Union was more con- 
cerned about cultivating and monitoring political loyalty in its East 
European military allies than increasing their utility as combat 
forces. The Soviet Union assigned trusted communist party lead- 
ers of the East European nations to the most important military 
command positions despite their lack of military qualifications. It 
forced its East European allies to emulate Soviet military ranks and 
uniforms and abandon all distinctive national military customs and 
practices; these allied armies used all Soviet-made weapons and 
equipment. The Soviet Union accepted many of the most promis- 
ing and eager East European officers into Soviet mid-career mili- 
tary institutions and academies for the advanced study essential 
to their promotion within the national armed forces command struc- 
tures. Furthermore, the East European ministries of defense es- 
tablished political departments on the model of the Soviet Union's 
Main Political Directorate of the Soviet Army and Navy. 

The Formation of the Warsaw Pact, 1955-70 

On May 14, 1955, the Soviet Union institutionalized its East 
European alliance system, henceforth known as the Warsaw Pact, 
when it met with representatives from Albania, Bulgaria, Czecho- 
slovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Romania in Warsaw to sign the 
multilateral Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual As- 
sistance, which was identical to their existing bilateral treaties with 
the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union claimed that the creation of 
the Warsaw Pact was in direct response to the inclusion of the Fed- 
eral Republic of Germany (West Germany) in NATO in 1955. 
At the same time, the formation of a legally defined, multilateral 
alliance reinforced the Soviet Union's claim to be leader of the world 
socialist system (see Glossary), enhanced its prestige, and legitimized 
its presence and influence in Eastern Europe. The new alliance sys- 
tem also gave the Soviet Union a structure for dealing with its East 
European allies more efficiently when it superimposed the multi- 
lateral Warsaw Pact on their existing bilateral treaty ties. Finally, 
as a formal organization the Warsaw Pact provided the Soviet Union 
an official counterweight to NATO in East- West diplomacy. 



878 



Appendix C 



The 1955 treaty establishing the Warsaw Pact stated that rela- 
tions among the signatories were based on total equality, mutual 
noninterference in internal affairs, and respect for national 
sovereignty and independence. It declared that the Warsaw Pact's 
function was collective self-defense of the member states against 
external aggression, as provided for in Article 51 of the United Na- 
tions Charter. The terms of the alliance specified the Political Con- 
sultative Committee (PCC) as the highest alliance organ. The 
founding document formed the Joint Command to organize the 
actual defense of the Warsaw Pact member states, declared that 
the national deputy ministers of defense would act as the deputies 
of the Warsaw Pact commander in chief, and established the Joint 
Staff, which included the representatives of the general (main) staffs 
of all its member states. The treaty set the Warsaw Pact's dura- 
tion at twenty years with an automatic ten-year extension, provided 
that none of the member states renounced it before its expiration. 
The treaty also included a standing offer to disband simultaneous- 
ly with other military alliances, i.e., NATO, contingent on East- 
West agreement about a general treaty on collective security in 
Europe. This provision indicated that the Soviet Union either did 
not expect that such an accord could be negotiated or did not con- 
sider its new multilateral alliance structure very important. 

Until the early 1960s, the Soviet Union used the Warsaw Pact 
more as a tool in East-West diplomacy than as a functioning 
political-military alliance. Under the leadership of Nikita S. Khru- 
shchev, the Soviet Union sought to project a more flexible and less 
threatening image abroad and, toward this end, used the alliance's 
PCC to publicize its foreign policy initiatives and peace offensives, 
including frequent calls for the formation of an all-European col- 
lective security system to replace the continent's existing military 
alliances. In 1956 the Warsaw Pact member states admitted East 
Germany to the Joint Command and sanctioned the transforma- 
tion of East Germany's Garrisoned People's Police into a full- 
fledged army. But the Soviet Union took no steps to integrate the 
allied armies into a multinational force. 

In his 1956 "secret speech" at the Twentieth Party Congress 
of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), Khrushchev 
denounced the arbitrariness, excesses, and terror of the Joseph V. 
Stalin era. Khrushchev sought to achieve greater legitimacy for his 
authoritarian rule on the basis of the party's ability to meet the 
material needs of the Soviet population. His de-Stalinization 
campaign quickly influenced developments in Eastern Europe. 
Responding to East European demands for greater political au- 
tonomy, Khrushchev accepted the replacement of Stalinist Polish 



879 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

and Hungarian leaders with newly rehabilitated (see Glossary) com- 
munist party figures, who were able to generate genuine popular 
support for their regimes. He sought to turn Soviet-controlled East 
European satellites into at least semiautonomous countries and to 
make Soviet domination of the Warsaw Pact less obvious. He al- 
lowed the East European armies to restore their distinctive national 
practices and to reemphasize professional military opinions over 
political considerations in most areas. Military training supplanted 
political indoctrination as the primary task of the East European 
military establishments. Most important, the Soviet Ministry of 
Defense recalled many Soviet army officers and advisers from their 
positions within the East European armies. 

In October 1956, the Polish and Hungarian communist parties 
lost control of the de-Stalinization process in their countries. The 
ensuing crises threatened the integrity of the entire Soviet alliance 
system in Eastern Europe and led to a significant change in the 
role of the Warsaw Pact as an element of Soviet security. 

The Polish October 

The Polish government's handling of the workers' riots in Poland 
in October 1956 defined the boundaries of national communism 
acceptable to the Soviet Union. The Polish United Workers' Party 
found that the grievances that inspired the riots could be amelio- 
rated without presenting a challenge to its monopoly on political 
power or its strict adherence to Soviet foreign policy and security 
interests. Poland's new communist party leader, Wladyslaw Go- 
mulka, and the Polish People's Army's top commanders indicated 
to Khrushchev and the other Soviet leaders that any Soviet inter- 
vention in the internal affairs of Poland would meet united, mas- 
sive resistance. While insisting on Poland's right to exercise greater 
autonomy in domestic matters, Gomulka also pointed out that the 
Polish United Workers' Party remained in firm control of the coun- 
try and expressed his intention to continue to accept Soviet direc- 
tion in external affairs. Gomulka 's position permitted the Soviet 
Union to redefine the minimum requirements for its East Euro- 
pean allies: upholding the leading role of the communist party in 
society and remaining a member of the Warsaw Pact. These two 
conditions ensured that the Soviet Union's most vital interests would 
be protected and that Eastern Europe would remain a buffer zone 
for the Soviet Union. 

The Hungarian Revolution 

By contrast, the full-scale revolution in Hungary, which began 
in late October with public demonstrations in support of the rioting 



880 



Appendix C 



Polish workers, openly flouted these Soviet stipulations. Initial 
domestic liberalization acceptable to the Soviet Union quickly es- 
calated to nonnegotiable issues like challenging the communist 
party's exclusive hold on political power and establishing genuine 
national independence. Imre Nagy, the new communist party 
leader, withdrew Hungary from the Warsaw Pact and ended Hun- 
gary's alliance with the Soviet Union. The Soviet army invaded 
with 200,000 troops, crushed the Hungarian Revolution, and 
brought Hungary back within limits tolerable to the Soviet Union. 
The five days of pitched battles left 25,000 Hungarians dead. 

After 1956 the Soviet Union practically disbanded the Hungarian 
People's Army and reinstituted a program of political indoctrina- 
tion in the units that remained. In May 1957, unable to rely on 
Hungarian forces to maintain order, the Soviet Union increased 
its troop level in Hungary from two to four divisions and forced 
Hungary to sign a status-of-forces agreement, placing the Soviet 
military presence on a solid and permanent legal basis. The Soviet 
forces stationed in Hungary officially became the Southern Group 
of Forces. 

The events of 1956 in Poland and Hungary forced a Soviet 
reevaluation of the reliability and roles of the Non- Soviet Warsaw 
Pact (NSWP) countries in its alliance system. Before 1956 the Soviet 
leadership believed that the Stalinist policy of heavy political in- 
doctrination and enforced Sovietization had transformed the na- 
tional armies into reliable instruments of the Soviet Union. After 
1956 the Soviet Union increasingly suspected that the East Euro- 
pean armies were likely to remain loyal to national causes. 

A Shift Toward Greater Cohesion 

After the very foundation of the Soviet alliance system in Eastern 
Europe was shaken in 1956, Khrushchev sought to shore up the 
Soviet Union's position. Although Khrushchev had invoked the 
terms of the Warsaw Pact as a justification for the Soviet invasion 
of Hungary, the action was in no sense a cooperative allied effort. 
In the early 1960s, however, the Soviet Union took steps to turn 
the alliance's armed forces into a multinational intervention force. 
In the future, an appeal to the Warsaw Pact's collective self-defense 
provisions and the participation of allied forces would put a multi- 
lateral cover over unilateral Soviet interventions to keep errant 
member states in the alliance and their communist parties in power. 
By presenting future policing actions as the product of joint War- 
saw Pact decisions, the Soviet Union hoped to deflect the kind of 
direct international criticism the Soviet Union was subjected to after 
the invasion of Hungary. Such internal deployments, however, were 



881 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

clearly contrary to the Warsaw Pact's rule of mutual noninterfer- 
ence in domestic affairs and conflicted with the alliance's declared 
purpose of collective self-defense against external aggression. To 
circumvent this semantic difficulty, the Soviet Union merely rede- 
fined external aggression to include any spontaneous anti-Soviet, 
anticommunist uprising in an allied state. 

In the late 1950s, the Soviet Union began to take a series of steps 
to transform the Warsaw Pact into its intra- alliance intervention 
force. Although it had previously worked with the East European 
military establishments on a bilateral basis, the Soviet Union started 
to integrate the national armies under the Warsaw Pact framework. 
Military exercises with Soviet forces and the allied national armies 
became the primary focus of Warsaw Pact military activities. 

The Soviet Union planned these joint exercises to prevent any 
NSWP member state from fully controlling its national army and 
to reduce the possibility that an East European regime could suc- 
cessfully resist Soviet domination and pursue independent policies. 
A series of joint Warsaw Pact exercises, organized and controlled 
by the Soviet Union, was intended to prevent other East Europe- 
an national command authorities from following the example of 
Yugoslavia and Albania and adopting a territorial defense strategy. 

The Prague Spring 

In 1968 an acute crisis in the Soviet alliance system suddenly 
occurred. The domestic liberalization program of the Czechoslovak 
communist regime led by Alexander Dubcek threatened to gen- 
erate popular demands for similar changes in the other East Euro- 
pean countries and even parts of the Soviet Union. Domestic change 
in Czechoslovakia also began to affect defense and foreign policy, 
just as it had in Hungary in 1956, despite Dubcek' s declared in- 
tention to keep Czechoslovakia within the Warsaw Pact. Once 
again, the Soviet Union felt it necessary to forestall the spread of 
liberalization and to assert its right to enforce the boundaries of 
ideological permissibility in Eastern Europe. This concern was the 
major factor in the Soviet Union's decision to invade Czechoslovakia 
in 1968. The Soviet decision in favor of intervention focused, in 
large measure, on ensuring its ability to maintain physical control 
of its wayward ally in the future. 

In contrast to its rapid, bloody suppression of the 1956 Hun- 
garian Revolution, the Soviet Union engaged in a lengthy cam- 
paign of military coercion against Czechoslovakia. In 1968 the 
Soviet Union conducted more joint Warsaw Pact exercises than 
in any other year since the maneuvers began in the early 1960s. 
The Soviet Union used these exercises to mask preparations for, 



882 



Appendix C 



and threaten, a Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia that would 
occur unless Dubcek complied with Soviet demands and abandoned 
his political liberalization program. Massive Warsaw Pact rear ser- 
vices and communications exercises in July and August enabled 
the Soviet Union's General Staff to execute its plan for the inva- 
sion without alerting Western governments. Under the pretext of 
conducting exercises, Soviet and NSWP divisions were brought 
up to full strength, reservists were called up, and civilian trans- 
portation resources were requisitioned. The cover that these exer- 
cises provided allowed the Soviet Union to deploy forces along 
Czechoslovakia's borders with Poland and East Germany and to 
demonstrate to the Czechoslovak leadership its readiness to in- 
tervene. 

On August 20, a force consisting of twenty-three Soviet divi- 
sions invaded Czechoslovakia. Token NSWP contingents, including 
one Hungarian, two East German, and two Polish divisions, along 
with one Bulgarian brigade, also took part in the invasion. In the 
wake of the invasion, the Soviet Union installed a more compliant 
communist party leadership and concluded a status-of-forces agree- 
ment with Czechoslovakia, which established a permanent Soviet 
presence in that country for the first time. Five Soviet divisions 
remained in Czechoslovakia to protect the country from future "im- 
perialist threats." These troops became the Central Group of Forces 
and added to Soviet strength directly bordering NATO member 
states. The Czechoslovak People's Army, having failed to oppose 
the Soviet intervention and defend the country's sovereignty, 
suffered a tremendous loss of prestige after 1968. At Soviet direc- 
tion, reliable Czechoslovak authorities conducted a purge and po- 
litical reeducation campaign in the Czechoslovak People's Army 
and cut its size. With its one-time closest partner now proven un- 
reliable, the Soviet Union turned to Poland as its principal East 
European ally. 

The Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia showed the hol- 
lowness of the Soviet alliance system in Eastern Europe in both 
its political and its military aspects. The Soviet Union did not con- 
vene the PCC to invoke Warsaw Pact action during the 1968 cri- 
sis because a formal session would have revealed a deep rift in the 
Warsaw Pact alliance and given Czechoslovakia an international 
platform from which it could have defended its reform program. 

While the participation of four NSWP armies in the Soviet-led 
invasion of Czechoslovakia ostensibly demonstrated considerable 
Warsaw Pact cohesion, the invasion also served to erode it. The 
invasion of Czechoslovakia proved that the Warsaw Pact's mis- 
sion of keeping orthodox East European communist party regimes 



883 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

in power — and less orthodox ones in line — was more important 
than the mission of defending its member states against external 
aggression. The Soviet Union was unable to conceal the fact that 
the alliance served as the ultimate mechanism for its control of 
Eastern Europe. Formulated in response to the crisis in Czecho- 
slovakia, the Brezhnev Doctrine (see Glossary) declared that the 
East European countries had "limited" sovereignty, to be exer- 
cised only as long as it did not damage the interests of the "so- 
cialist commonwealth" as a whole. 

The Romanian leader, Nicolae Ceau§escu, after refusing to con- 
tribute troops to the Soviet intervention force as the other East 
European countries had done, denounced the invasion of Czecho- 
slovakia as a violation of international law and the Warsaw Pact's 
cardinal principle of mutual noninterference in internal affairs. 
Ceau§escu insisted that collective self-defense against external ag- 
gression was the only valid mission of the Warsaw Pact. Albania 
also objected to the Soviet invasion and indicated its disapproval 
by withdrawing formally from the Warsaw Pact after six years of 
inactive membership. 

In 1968, following the Warsaw Pact's invasion of Czechoslovakia, 
Romania demanded the withdrawal from its territory of all Soviet 
troops, advisers, and the Soviet resident representative. Reduc- 
ing its participation in Warsaw Pact activities considerably, Roma- 
nia also refused to allow Soviet or NSWP forces, which could serve 
as Warsaw Pact intervention forces, to cross or conduct exercises 
on its territory. Following the lead of Yugoslavia and Albania, 
Romania reasserted full national control over its armed forces and 
military policies by adopting a territorial defense strategy called 
"War of the Entire People," whose aim was to end Soviet domi- 
nation and to guard against Soviet encroachments. 

Organization and Strategy of the Warsaw Pact 

The Warsaw Pact administered both the political and the mili- 
tary activities of the Soviet alliance system in Eastern Europe. A 
series of changes that began in 1969 gave the Warsaw Pact the struc- 
ture it retained through the late 1980s. 

Political Organization 

The general (or first) secretaries of the communist and workers' 
parties and heads of state of the Warsaw Pact member states met 
in the PCC. The PCC provided a formal point of contact for the 
Soviet and East European leaders in addition to less formal bilateral 
meetings and visits. As the highest decision-making body of the 
Warsaw Pact, the PCC was charged with assessing international 



884 



Appendix C 



developments that affected the security of the allied states and war- 
ranted the execution of the Warsaw Pact's collective self-defense 
provisions. In practice, however, the Soviet Union was unwilling 
to rely on the PCC to perform this function, fearing that Hun- 
gary, Czechoslovakia, and Romania would use PCC meetings to 
oppose Soviet plans and policies. The PCC was also the main center 
for coordinating the foreign policy activities of the Warsaw Pact 
countries. After the late 1960s, when several member states began 
to use the alliance structure to confront Soviet domination and as- 
sert more independent foreign policies, the Soviet Union had to 
negotiate to gain support for its foreign policy within Warsaw Pact 
councils. 

In 1976 the PCC established the permanent Committee of 
Ministers of Foreign Affairs (CMFA) to regularize the previously 
ad hoc meetings of Soviet and East European representatives to 
the Warsaw Pact. Given the official task of preparing recommen- 
dations for and executing the decisions of the PCC, the CMFA 
and its permanent Joint Secretariat provided the Soviet Union an 
additional point of contact to establish a consensus among its al- 
lies on contentious issues. Less formal meetings of the deputy 
ministers of foreign affairs of the Warsaw Pact member states 
represented another layer of alliance coordination. The ministers 
were tasked with resolving alliance problems at these working levels 
so that they would not erupt into embarrassing disputes between 
the Soviet and East European leaders at PCC meetings. 

Military Organization 

The Warsaw Pact's military organization was larger and more 
active than the alliance's political bodies. Several different organi- 
zations were responsible for implementing PCC directives on 
defense matters and developing the capabilities of the national 
armies that constituted the Warsaw Pact's armed forces. The prin- 
cipal task, however, of the military organizations was to link the 
East European armies to the Soviet armed forces. The alliance's 
military agencies coordinated the training and mobilization of the 
East European national forces assigned to the Warsaw Pact. In turn, 
these forces could be deployed in accordance with Soviet military 
strategy against an NSWP country or NATO. 

Soviet control of the Warsaw Pact as a military alliance was 
scarcely veiled. The Warsaw Pact's armed forces had no command 
structure, logistics network, air defense system, or operations direc- 
torate separate from the Soviet Ministry of Defense. The 1968 in- 
vasion of Czechoslovakia demonstrated how easily control of the 
Warsaw Pact's armed forces could be transferred in wartime to 



885 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

the Soviet General Staff and to Soviet field commanders. The dual 
roles of the Warsaw Pact commander in chief, who was a first 
deputy Soviet minister of defense, and the Warsaw Pact chief of 
staff, who was a first deputy chief of the Soviet General Staff, facili- 
tated the transfer of Warsaw Pact forces to Soviet control. The 
subordination of the Warsaw Pact to the Soviet General Staff was 
also shown clearly in the Soviet military hierarchy. In the Soviet 
order of precedence, the chief of the Soviet General Staff was listed 
above the Warsaw Pact commander in chief even though both 
positions also were designated first deputy ministers of defense. 

Ironically, the first innovations in the Warsaw Pact's structure 
after 1955 came after the invasion of Czechoslovakia, which had 
clearly underlined Soviet control of the alliance. At the 1969 PCC 
session in Budapest, the Soviet Union agreed to cosmetic altera- 
tions in the Warsaw Pact designed to address East European com- 
plaints that the Soviet Union dominated the alliance. These changes 
included the establishment of the formal Committee of Ministers 
of Defense (CMD) and the Military Council, as well as the addi- 
tion of more non-Soviet officers to the Joint Command and the 
Joint Staff. 

Headed by the Warsaw Pact's commander in chief, the Joint 
Command was divided into distinct Soviet and East European tiers. 
The deputy commanders in chief included Soviet and East Euro- 
pean officers. The Soviet officers serving as deputy commanders 
in chief were specifically responsible for coordinating the East Euro- 
pean navies and air forces with the corresponding Soviet service 
branches. The East European deputy commanders in chief were 
the deputy ministers of defense of the NSWP countries. While 
providing formal NSWP representation in the Joint Command, 
the East European deputies also assisted in the coordination of 
Soviet and non- Soviet forces. The commander in chief, deputy com- 
manders in chief, and chief of staff of the Warsaw Pact's armed 
forces gathered in the Military Council on a semiannual basis to 
plan and evaluate operational and combat training. With the War- 
saw Pact's commander in chief acting as chairman, the sessions 
of the Military Council rotated among the capitals of the Warsaw 
Pact countries. 

The Joint Staff was the only standing Warsaw Pact military body 
and the official executive organ of the CMD, commander in chief, 
and Military Council. As such, it performed the bulk of the War- 
saw Pact's work in the military realm. Like the Joint Command, 
the Joint Staff had both Soviet and East European officers. The 
non- Soviet officers also served as the principal link between the 
Soviet and East European armed forces. The Joint Staff organized 



886 



Appendix C 



all joint exercises and arranged multilateral meetings and contacts 
of Warsaw Pact military personnel at all levels. 

The 1969 PCC meeting also approved the formation of two more 
Warsaw Pact military bodies, the Military Scientific-Technical 
Council and the Technical Committee. These innovations in the 
Warsaw Pact structure represented a Soviet attempt to harness 
NSWP weapons and military equipment production, which had 
greatly increased during the 1960s. After 1969 the Soviet Union 
insisted on tighter Warsaw Pact military integration as the price 
for greater NSWP participation in alliance decision making. 

Soviet Military Strategy and the Warsaw Pact 

The Soviet armed forces constituted the bulk of the Warsaw 
Pact's military manpower. In the 1980s, the Soviet Union provided 
73 of the 126 Warsaw Pact tank and motorized rifle divisions. Lo- 
cated in the groups of Soviet forces and the four westernmost mili- 
tary districts of the Soviet Union, these divisions comprised the 
majority of the Warsaw Pact's combat-ready, full-strength units. 
Looking at the numbers of Soviet troops stationed in or near Eastern 
Europe, and the historical record, one could conclude that the War- 
saw Pact was only a Soviet mechanism for organizing intra-alliance 
interventions or maintaining control of Eastern Europe and did 
not significantly augment Soviet offensive power vis-a-vis NATO. 
Essentially a peacetime structure for NSWP training and mobili- 
zation, the Warsaw Pact had no independent role in wartime nor 
a military strategy distinct from Soviet military strategy. The in- 
dividual NSWP armies, however, played important roles in the 
Soviet strategy for war outside the formal context of the Warsaw 
Pact. 

The goal of Soviet military strategy in Europe was a quick vic- 
tory over NATO in a nonnuclear war. Soviet miliary strategists 
planned to defeat NATO decisively before its political and mili- 
tary command structure could consult and decide how to respond 
to an attack. Under this strategy, success would hinge on inflict- 
ing a rapid succession of defeats on NATO to break its will to fight, 
knock some of its member states out of the war, and cause the col- 
lapse of the Western alliance. In this plan, the Warsaw Pact coun- 
tries would provide forward bases, staging areas, and interior lines 
of communication for the Soviet Union against NATO. A quick 
victory would be needed to keep the United States from escalating 
the conflict to the nuclear level by making retaliation against the 
Soviet Union futile. A rapid defeat of NATO would preempt the 
mobilization of the West's superior industrial and economic 
resources, as well as reinforcement from the United States, which 



887 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

would enable NATO to prevail in a longer war. Most significant, 
in a strictly conventional war the Soviet Union could have con- 
ceivably captured its objective, the economic potential of Western 
Europe, relatively intact. This plan for winning a conventional war 
quickly to preclude the possibility of a nuclear response by NATO 
and the United States was based on the deep offensive operation 
concept that Soviet military theoreticians first proposed in the 1930s. 

Continuing Soviet concern over the combat reliability of its East 
European allies influenced, to a great extent, the deployment of 
NSWP forces under the Soviet military strategy. Soviet leaders be- 
lieved that the Warsaw Pact allies would be most likely to remain 
loyal if the Soviet armed forces engaged in a short, successful offen- 
sive operation against NATO while deploying NSWP forces defen- 
sively. Soviet concern over the reliability of its Warsaw Pact allies 
was reflected in the alliance's military-technical policy, which was 
under Soviet control. The Soviet Union gave the East European 
allies less modern, though still effective, weapons and equipment 
to keep their armies less capable than the Soviet armed forces. Thus 
the Soviet Union could keep the East European armies somewhat 
modernized while not substantially increasing their capability to 
resist Soviet intervention. 

The Weakening of the Alliance's Cohesion; 1970-85 

Beginning in the early 1970s, the East European allies formed 
intra- alliance coalitions in Warsaw Pact meetings to oppose the 
Soviet Union, defuse its pressure on any one NSWP member state, 
and delay or obstruct Soviet policies. The Soviet Union could no 
longer use the alliance to transmit its positions to, and receive auto- 
matic endorsements from, the subordinate NSWP countries. While 
still far from genuine consultation, Warsaw Pact policy coordina- 
tion between the Soviet Union and the East European countries 
in the 1970s was a step away from the blatant Soviet control of 
the alliance that had characterized the 1950s. East European op- 
position forced the Soviet Union to treat the Warsaw Pact as a forum 
for managing relations with its allies and bidding for their support 
on issues like detente, the Third World, the Solidarity movement 
in Poland, alliance burden-sharing, and relations with NATO. 

Detente 

In the late 1960s, the Soviet Union abandoned its earlier efforts 
to achieve the simultaneous dissolution of NATO and the War- 
saw Pact and concentrated instead on legitimating the territorial 
status quo in Europe. The Soviet Union asserted that the official 
East- West agreements reached during the detente era "legally 



888 



Appendix C 



secured the most important political-territorial results of World War 
II. " Under these arrangements, the Soviet Union allowed its East 
European allies to recognize West Germany's existence as a separate 
state. In return the West, and West Germany in particular, explic- 
itly accepted the inviolability of postwar borders in Eastern Eu- 
rope and tacitly recognized Soviet control of the eastern portion 
of both Germany and Europe. The Soviet Union claimed the 1975 
Helsinki Accords (see Glossary), which ratified the existing politi- 
cal division of Europe, as a major victory for Soviet diplomacy and 
the realization of long-standing Soviet calls, issued through the 
PCC, for a general European conference on collective security. 

The consequences of detente, however, also posed a significant 
challenge to Soviet control of Eastern Europe. First, detente caused 
a crisis in Soviet-East German relations. East Germany's leader, 
Walter Ulbricht, opposed improved relations with West Germany 
and, following Ceau§escu's tactics, used Warsaw Pact councils to 
attack the Soviet detente policy openly. In the end, the Soviet Union 
removed Ulbricht from power and subsequently proceeded unhin- 
dered into detente with the West. Second, detente blurred the strict 
bipolarity of the Cold War era, opened Eastern Europe to greater 
Western influence, and loosened Soviet control over its allies. The 
relaxation of East-West tensions in the 1970s reduced the level of 
threat perceived by the NSWP countries, along with their perceived 
need for Soviet protection, and eroded Warsaw Pact alliance co- 
hesion. After the West formally accepted the territorial status quo 
in Europe, the Soviet Union was unable to point to the danger of 
"imperialist" attempts to overturn East European communist party 
regimes to justify its demand for strict Warsaw Pact unity behind 
its leadership, as it had in earlier years. The Soviet Union resorted 
to occasional propaganda offensives, accusing West Germany of 
revanchism and aggressive intentions in Eastern Europe, to remind 
its allies of their ultimate dependence on Soviet protection and to 
reinforce the Warsaw Pact's cohesion against the attraction of good 
relations with the West. 

Despite these problems, the detente period witnessed relatively 
stable Soviet-East European relations within the Warsaw Pact. In 
the early 1970s, the Soviet Union greatly expanded military cooper- 
ation with the NSWP countries. Joint Warsaw Pact exercises con- 
ducted in the 1970s gave the Soviet allies their first real capability 
for offensive operations other than policing actions within the alli- 
ance. The East European countries also began to take an active 
part in Soviet strategy in the Third World. 

With Eastern Europe in a relatively quiescent phase, the Soviet 
Union began to build an informal alliance system in the Third 



889 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

World during the 1970s. It employed its Warsaw Pact allies as sur- 
rogates primarily because their activities minimized the need for 
direct Soviet involvement and obviated possible international criti- 
cism of Soviet actions in the Third World. East European allies 
followed the lead of Soviet diplomacy and signed treaties of friend- 
ship, cooperation, and mutual assistance with most of the impor- 
tant Soviet Third World allies. These treaties established a "socialist 
division of labor" among the East European countries in which 
each specialized in the provision of certain aspects of military or 
economic assistance to different Soviet Third World allies. 

In the 1970s and 1980s, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and East Ger- 
many were the principal Soviet proxies for arms transfers to the Third 
World. These NSWP countries supplied Soviet-manufactured 
equipment, spare parts, and training personnel to various Third 
World armies. During this period, the Soviet Union also relied on 
its East European allies to provide the bulk of the economic aid 
and credits given by the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe to the 
countries of the Third World. Beginning in the late 1970s, mounting 
economic problems sharply curtailed the contribution of the East 
European allies to the Soviet Union's Third World activities. In 
the early 1980s, when turmoil in Poland reminded the Soviet Union 
that Eastern Europe remained its most valuable asset, the Third 
World became a somewhat less important object of Soviet attention. 

The rise of the independent trade union movement Solidarity 
shook the foundation of communist party rule in Poland and, con- 
sequentiy, Soviet control of a country the Soviet Union considered 
critical to its security and alliance system. Given Poland's central 
geographic position, this unrest threatened to isolate East Germany, 
sever vital lines of communication to Soviet forces deployed against 
NATO, and disrupt Soviet control in the rest of Eastern Europe. 

As it did in Czechoslovakia in 1968, the Soviet Union used the 
Warsaw Pact to carry out a campaign of military coercion against 
the Polish leadership. In 1980 and 1981, the Soviet Union con- 
ducted joint Warsaw Pact exercises with a higher frequency than 
at any time since 1968 to exert pressure on the Polish regime to 
solve the Solidarity problem. Under the cover that the exercises 
afforded, the Soviet Union mobilized and deployed its reserve and 
regular troops in the Belorussian Military District as a potential 
invasion force (see fig. 30). Faced with the threat of Soviet mili- 
tary intervention, the Polish government instituted martial law and 
suppressed Solidarity. From the Soviet perspective, the imposition 
of martial law by Polish internal security forces was the best possi- 
ble outcome. Martial law made the suppression of Solidarity a 



890 



Appendix C 



strictly domestic affair and spared the Soviet Union the international 
criticism that an invasion would have generated. 

Although the Polish People's Army had previously played an 
important role in Soviet strategy for a coalition war against NATO, 
the Soviet Union had to revise its plans and estimates of Poland's 
reliability after 1981, and it turned to East Germany as its most 
reliable ally. In the early 1980s, because of its eager promotion 
of Soviet interests in the Third World and its importance in Soviet 
military strategy, East Germany completed its transformation from 
defeated enemy and dependent ally into the principal junior part- 
ner of the Soviet Union. 

The End of Detente 

In the late 1970s, the West grew disenchanted with detente, which 
had failed to prevent Soviet advances in the Third World, the 
deployment of SS-20 intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) 
aimed at West European targets, the invasion of Afghanistan, or 
the suppression of Solidarity. The Soviet Union used the renewal 
of East- West tension as a justification for forcing its allies to close 
ranks within the Warsaw Pact. But restoring the alliance's cohe- 
sion and renewing its confrontation with Western Europe proved 
difficult after several years of good East- West relations. In the early 
1980s, internal Warsaw Pact disputes centered on relations with 
the West after detente, NSWP contributions to alliance defense 
spending, and the alliance's reaction to IRBM deployments in 
NATO. The resolution of these disputes produced significant 
changes in the Warsaw Pact as, for the first time, two or more 
NSWP countries simultaneously challenged Soviet military and for- 
eign policy preferences within the alliance. 

In the PCC meetings of the late 1970s and early 1980s, Soviet 
and East European leaders of the Warsaw Pact debated the threat 
that they perceived emanated from NATO. Discussions of the 
"NATO threat" also played a large part in Warsaw Pact debates 
about an appropriate level of NSWP military expenditure. The 
issue of an appropriate Warsaw Pact response to NATO's 1983 
deployment of American Pershing II and cruise missiles, match- 
ing the Soviet SS-20s, proved to be the most divisive one for the 
Soviet Union and its East European allies in the early and 
mid-1980s. After joining in a vociferous Soviet propaganda cam- 
paign against the deployment, the East European countries split 
with the Soviet Union over how to react when their "peace offen- 
sive" failed to forestall it. The refusal of the NSWP countries to 
meet their Warsaw Pact financial obligations in the 1980s further 
indicated diminished alliance cohesion. 



891 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

The Renewal of the Alliance, 1985-89 

After becoming general secretary of the CPSU in March 1985, 
Mikhail S. Gorbachev organized a meeting of the East European 
leaders to renew the Warsaw Pact, which was due to expire that 
May. Few people doubted that the Warsaw Pact member states 
would renew the alliance. Some Western analysts speculated, 
however, that the Soviet Union might unilaterally dismantle its 
formal alliance structure to improve the Soviet image and to put 
pressure on the West to disband NATO. The Soviet Union could 
still have relied on the network of bilateral treaties in Eastern Eu- 
rope, which predated the formation of the Warsaw Pact and had 
been renewed regularly. Combined with later status-of-forces agree- 
ments, these treaties assured the Soviet Union that the essence of 
its alliance system and buffer zone in Eastern Europe would re- 
main intact, regardless of the Warsaw Pact's status. But despite 
their utility, the bilateral treaties could not fully substitute for the 
Warsaw Pact. Without a formal alliance, the Soviet Union would 
have to coordinate foreign policy and military integration with its 
East European allies through cumbersome bilateral arrangements. 
Although the Soviet and East European leaders debated the terms 
of the Warsaw Pact's renewal at their April 1985 meeting, they 
did not change the original 1955 treaty, nor the alliance's struc- 
ture, in any way. 

In the mid- to late 1980s, the future of the Warsaw Pact hinged 
on Gorbachev's developing policy toward Eastern Europe. At the 
Twenty-Seventh Party Congress in 1986, Gorbachev acknowledged 
that differences existed among the Soviet allies and that it would 
be unrealistic to expect them to have identical views on all issues. 
He demonstrated a greater sensitivity to East European concerns 
than previous Soviet leaders by briefing the NSWP leaders in their 
own capitals after the 1985 Geneva and 1986 Reykjavik superpower 
summit meetings. In 1987 the Warsaw Pact, under Soviet tutelage, 
adopted a defense-oriented military doctrine. And, following Gor- 
bachev's announced unilateral reduction in the Soviet armed forces, 
the NSWP countries also announced unilateral military reductions 
during 1988 and 1989. In the late 1980s, however, mounting eco- 
nomic difficulties and the advanced age of trusted, long-time com- 
munist party leaders, like Gustav Husak in Czechoslovakia, Todor 
Zhivkov in Bulgaria, and Janos Kadar in Hungary, intensified the 
danger of domestic turmoil and internal power struggles in the 
NSWP countries and threatened the alliance's cohesion. 

* * * 



892 



Appendix C 



The 1980s have witnessed a dramatic increase in the amount 
of secondary source material published about the Warsaw Pact. 
The works of Alex Alexiev, Andrzej Korbonski, and Condoleezza 
Rice, as well as those of various Soviet writers, provide a complete 
picture of the Soviet alliance system and the East European mili- 
tary establishments before the formation of the Warsaw Pact. 
William J. Lewis's The Warsaw Pact is a very useful reference work 
with considerable information on the establishment of the War- 
saw Pact and the armies of its member states. The works of Malcolm 
Mackintosh, a long-time observer of the Warsaw Pact, cover the 
changes in the Warsaw Pact's organizational structure and func- 
tions through the years. Christopher D. Jones's Soviet Influence in 
Eastern Europe and subsequent articles provide a coherent inter- 
pretation of the Soviet Union's use of the Warsaw Pact to control 
its East European allies. In "The Warsaw Pact at 25," Dale R. 
Herspring examines intra- alliance politics in the PCC and East Eu- 
ropean attempts to reduce Soviet domination of the Warsaw Pact. 
Soviet military journals are the best source for insights into the East 
European role in Soviet military strategy. Daniel N. Nelson and 
Ivan Volgyes analyze East European reliability in the Warsaw Pact. 
Nelson takes a quantitative approach to this perennial topic. By 
contrast, Volgyes uses a historical and political framework to draw 
his conclusions on the reliability issue. The works of Richard C. 
Martin and Daniel S. Papp present thorough discussions of Soviet 
policies on arming and equipping the NSWP allies. (For further 
information and complete citations, see Bibliography.) 



893 



Bibliography 



Chapter 1 

Auty, Robert, and Dmitry Obolensky (eds.). An Introduction to Rus- 
sian History, 1: Companion to Russian Studies. Cambridge: Cam- 
bridge University Press, 1976. 

Avrich, Paul. Russian Rebels, 1600-1800. New York: Schocken, 
1972. 

Baron, Samuel Haskell. Plekhanov: The Father of Russian Marxism. 
Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1963. 

Billington, James H. The Icon and the Axe: An Interpretive History of 
Russian Culture. New York: Knopf, 1966. 

Blackwell, William L. The Beginnings of Russian Industrialization, 
1800-1860. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968. 

Blum, Jerome. Lord and Peasant in Russia from the Ninth to the Nineteenth 
Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961. 

Cherniavsky, Michael. Tsar and People: Studies in Russian Myths. New 
York: Random House, 1969. 

Chew, Allen F. An Atlas of Russian History: Eleven Centuries of Changing 
Borders. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970. 

Crummey, Robert O. The Formation of Muscovy, 1304-1613. Lon- 
don: Longman, 1987. 

Curtiss, John Shelton. The Russian Army under Nicholas I, 1825-1855. 
Durham: Duke University Press, 1965. 

De Madariagha, Isabel. Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great. New 
Haven: Yale University Press, 1981. 

Dmytryshyn, Basil. A History of Russia. Englewood Cliffs, New Jer- 
sey: Prentice-Hall, 1977. 

Emmons, Terrance. The Russian Landed Gentry and the Peasant Eman- 
cipation of 1861. London: Cambridge University Press, 1968. 

Fedotov, Georgii Petrovich. The Russian Religious Mind. (2 vols.) 
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1946-66. 

Fennell, John Lister Illingsworth. Ivan the Great of Moscow. Lon- 
don: Macmillan, 1961. 

Florinsky, Michael T. Russia: A History and Interpretation. (2 vols.) 
New York: Macmillan, 1953. 

Gershchenkron, Alexander. Europe in the Russian Mirror: Four Lec- 
tures on Economic History. London: Cambridge University Press, 
1970. 

Geyer, Dietrich. Russian Imperialism: The Interaction of Domestic and 
Foreign Policy, 1860-1914. (Trans., Bruce Little.) New Haven: 
Yale University Press, 1987. 



895 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Grekov, Boris Dmitreevich. Kievan Rus. (Trans., Y. Sdobnikov.) 
Moscow: Foreign Languages, 1959. 

Gurko, Vladimir Iosifovich. Features and Figures of the Past: Govern- 
ment and Opinion in the Reign of Nicholas II. Stanford: Stanford 
University Press, 1939. 

Hittie, J.M. The Service City: State and Townsmen in Russia, 1600-1800. 
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979. 

Hosking, Geoffrey A. The Russian Constitutional Experiment: Govern- 
ment and Duma, 1907-1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University 
Press, 1973. 

Hrushevsky, Mykhailo. A History of the Ukraine. (Trans, and con- 
densed, O.J. Fredericksen.) New Haven: Yale University Press, 
1941. 

Jelavich, Barbara Brightfield. A Century of Russian Foreign Policy. 

Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1964. 
Keep, John L.H. The Rise of Social Democracy in Russia. Oxford: 

Clarendon, 1963. 
Kliuchevsky, Vasily. A Course in Russian History, 3: The Seventeenth 

Century. (Trans., N. Duddington.) Chicago: University of Chicago 

Press, 1968. 

. A Course in Russian History, 4: Peter the Great. (Trans., Liliana 

Archibald.) New York: Knopf, 1959. 
. Course of Russian History. (5 vols.) (Trans., C.J. Hogarth.) 

New York: Dutton, 1911-31. 
Kohut, Zenon E. Russian Centralism and Ukrainian Autonomy: Imperial 

Absorption of the Hetmanate, 1760s-1830s. Cambridge: Harvard 

Ukrainian Research Institute and Harvard University Press, 

1988. 

Lang, David Marshall. A Modern History of Soviet Georgia. New York: 
Grove Press, 1962. 

Liashchenko, P.I. A History of the National Economy of Russia to the 
1917 Revolution. (Trans., L.M. Herman.) New York: Macmil- 
lan, 1949. Reprint. New York: Octagon, 1970. 

Lincoln, Bruce D. Nicholas I: Emperor and Autocrat of all the Russians. 
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978. 

MacKenzie, David, and Michael W. Curran. A History of Russia 
and the Soviet Union. Chicago: Dorsey Press, 1987. 

Malia, Martin Edward. Alexander Herzen and the Birth of Russian So- 
cialism, 1812-1855. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961. 

Malozemoff, Andrew. Russian Far Eastern Policy, 1881-1904. Berke- 
ley: University of California Press, 1958. Reprint. New York: 
Octagon, 1977. 

Masaryk, Thomas Garrigue. The Spirit of Russia: Studies in History, 
Literature, and Philosophy. (3 vols.) (Trans., Eden and Cedar Paul.) 
New York: Macmillan, 1961-67. 



896 



Bibliography 



Miliukov, Pavel Nikolaevich. Outlines of Russian Culture. (Ed., 
Michael Karpovich; trans., Eleanor Davis and Valentine 
Ughert.) Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1942. 

Nichols, Robert L., and Theofanis George Stavrous (eds.). Rus- 
sian Orthodoxy under the Old Regime. Minneapolis: University of 
Minnesota Press, 1978. 

Norretranders, Bjarne. The Shaping of Czar dom under Ivan Groznnyi. 
Copenhagen: 1964. Reprint. London: Variorum, 1971. 

Oberlander, Edwin (ed.). Russia Enters the Twentieth Century. New 
York: Schocken, 1971. 

Orlovsky, Daniel T. The Limits of Reforms: The Ministry of Internal 
Affairs in Imperial Russia, 1807-1881. Cambridge: Harvard Uni- 
versity Press, 1981. 

Pares, Bernard. The Fall of the Russian Monarchy: A Study of Evidence. 
New York: Knopf, 1939. 

Pelenski, Jaroslav. Russia and Kazan: Conquest and Imperial Ideology, 
1438-1560s. The Hague: Mouton, 1974. 

Pierce, Richard A. Russian Central Asia, 1867-1917: A Study in Colo- 
nial Rule. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960. 

Pintner, Walter McKenzie, and Don Karl Rowney (eds.). Rus- 
sian Officialdom: The Bureaucratization of Russian Society from the Seven- 
teenth to the Twentieth Century. Chapel Hill: University of North 
Carolina Press, 1980. 

Pipes, Richard. Russia under the Old Regime. New York: Scribner's, 
1974. 

Platonov, Sergei Fedorovich. The Time of Troubles: A Historical Study 
of the Internal Crisis and Social Struggle in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Cen- 
tury Muscovy. (Trans., J. T. Alexander.) Lawrence: University 
Press of Kansas, 1970. 

Raeff, Marc. "History of Russia/Union of Soviet Socialist Repub- 
lics." Page 358 in Academic American Encyclopedia, 16. Danbury, 
Connecticut: Grolier, 1986. 

Michael Speransky: Statesman of Imperial Russia, 1772-1839. 

The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969. 

. Russian Intellectual History: An Anthology. New York: Hu- 
manities Press, 1978. 

Riasanovsky, Nicholas. A History of Russia. (4th ed.) New York: 
Oxford University Press, 1984. 

Rieber, Alfred J. Merchants and Entrepreneurs in Imperial Russia. Chapel 
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982. 

Nicholas I and Official Nationality in Russia, 1825-1855. Berke- 
ley: University of California Press, 1959. 

Rogger, Hans. National Consciousness in Eighteenth-Century Russia. 
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960. 



897 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Russia in the Age of Modernization and Reform, 1881-1917. 

London: Longman, 1987. 

Rurad, C.A. Fighting Words: Imperial Censorship and the Russian Press, 
1804-1906. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982. 

"Russia and the Soviet Union, History of." New Encyclopaedia 
Britannica, Macropaedia, 16. (15th ed.) Chicago: Encyclopae- 
dia Britannica, 1975. 

Schwartz, Solomon H. The Russian Revolution of 1905: The Workers' 
Movement and the Formation of Bolshevism and Menshevism. Chicago: 
University Press, 1967. 

Seton-Watson, Hugh. The Russian Empire, 1801-1917. Oxford: 
Clarendon, 1967. 

Smith, Clarence J. The Russian Struggle for World Power, 1914-1917: 
A Study of Russian Foreign Policy During World War I. New York: 
Philosophical Society, 1946. 

Stites, Richard. The Women 's Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, 
Nihilism, and Bolshevism, 1890-1930. Princeton: Princeton Univer- 
sity Press, 1978. 

Subtelny, Orest. Ukraine: A History. Toronto: University of Toronto 
Press, 1988. 

Sumner, Benedict Humphrey. Russia and the Balkans, 1870-1880. 
Oxford: Clarendon, 1947. 

Thaden, Edward C. Conservative Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Rus- 
sia. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1964. 

Thaden, Edward C. (ed.). Russification of the Baltic Provinces and Fin- 
land, 1855-1914. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981. 

Tread gold, Donald W. The West in Russia and China: Religious and 
Secular Thought in Modern Times. (2 vols.) Cambridge: Cambridge 
University Press, 1973. 

Venturi, Franco. Roots of Revolution: A History of the Populist and So- 
cialist Movements in Nineteenth-Century Russia. (Trans., Francis 
Haskill.) New York: Knopf, 1960. 

Vernadsky, George. The Mongols and Russia. New Haven: Yale 
University Press, 1954. 

Von Laue, Theodore. Sergei Witte and the Industrialization of Russia. 
New York: Columbia University Press, 1963. 

Walicki, Andrzej. A History of Russian Thought from the Enlighten- 
ment to Marxism. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1979. 

Wortman, Richard. The Development of a Russian Legal Consciousness. 
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976. 

Zaionchkovsky, Peter Andreevich. The Russian Autocracy under 
Alexander III. (Trans., David R. Jones.) Gulf Breeze, Florida: 
Academic International Press, 1976. 



898 



Bibliography 



Zenkovsky, Serge A. Pan-Turkism and Islam in Russia. Cambridge: 
Harvard University Press, 1960. 

Chapter 2 

Antonov-Ovseyenko, Anton. The Time of Stalin. New York: Harper 

and Row, 1981. 
Bialer, Seweryn. Stalin's Successors: Leadership, Stability, and Change 

in the Soviet Union. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 

1980. 

Black, Cyril E. (ed.). The Transformation of Russian Society. Cam- 
bridge: Harvard University Press, 1960. 

Bradley, J.F.N. Civil War in Russia, 1917-1920. London: Batsford, 
1975. 

Brown, Archie, and Michael Kaser (eds.). The Soviet Union since 
the Fall of Khrushchev. New York: Macmillan, 1978. 

Burant, Stephen R. "The Influence of Russian Tradition on the 
Political Style of the Soviet Elite," Political Science Quarterly, 102, 
No. 2, Summer 1987, 273-93. 

Burdzhalov, E.N. Russia's Second Revolution: The February 1917 Up- 
rising in Petrograd. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987. 

Chamberlin, William H. The Russian Revolution, 1917-1921. (2 vols.) 
New York: Macmillan, 1972. 

Cohen, Stephen F. Rethinking the Soviet Experience: Politics and His- 
tory since 1917. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. 

Conquest, Robert. The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Thirties. New 
York: Macmillan, 1968. 

Harvest of Sorrow. New York: Oxford University Press, 

1986. 

Daniels, Robert V. Red October: The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. 

Boston: Beacon Press, 1984. 
Russia: The Roots of Confrontation. Cambridge: Harvard 

University Press, 1985. 
Fitzpatrick, Sheila. The Russian Revolution. New York: Oxford 

University Press, 1982. 
Florinsky, Michael T. The End of the Russian Empire. New York: 

Fertig, 1973. 

Gelman, Harry. The Brezhnev Politburo and the Decline of Detente. 
Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985. 

Haimson, Leopold H. "The Parties and the State: The Evolution 
of Political Attitudes." Pages 110-44 in Cyril E. Black (ed.), 
The Transformation of Russian Society. Cambridge: Harvard Univer- 
sity Press, 1960. 



899 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Hasegawa, Tsuyoshi. The February Revolution: Petrograd, 1917. Seattle: 

University of Washington Press, 1981. 
Heller, Mikhail, and Aleksandr Nekrich. Utopia in Power. New 

York: Summit Books, 1986. 
Hosking, Geoffrey A. The First Socialist Society. London: Fontana 

Press/Collins, 1985. 
Khrushchev, Nikita S. Khrushchev Remembers. (Ed. and trans., Strobe 

Talbott.) Boston: Little, Brown, 1970. 
. Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament. Boston: Little, 

Brown, 1974. 

Lewin, Moshe. Russian Peasants and Soviet Power. Evanston: North- 
western University Press, 1968. 

Linden, Carl A. Khrushchev and the Soviet Leadership, 1957-1964. Bal- 
timore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1966. 

MacKenzie, David, and Michael W. Curran. A History of Russia 
and the Soviet Union. Chicago: Dorsey Press, 1987. 

Medvedev, Roy A. Khrushchev. Garden City, New York: Anchor 
Press, 1983. 

Let History Judge. New York: Knopf, 1971. 

Pares, Bernard. The Fall of the Russian Monarchy: A Study of Evidence. 
New York: Knopf, 1939. 

Pipes, Richard. The Formation of the Soviet Union. Cambridge: Har- 
vard University Press, 1954. 

Rabinowich, Alexander. The Bolsheviks Come to Power. New York: 
Norton, 1976. 

Remington, Thomas. Building Socialism in Bolshevik Russia. Pitts- 
burgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1984. 

Riasanovsky, Nicholas. A History of Russia. (4th ed.) New York: 
Oxford University Press, 1984. 

Schapiro, Leonard B. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union. New 
York: Vintage Books, 1960. 

The Russian Revolutions of 1917. New York: Basic Books, 

1984. 

Treadgold, Donald W. Twentieth Century Russia. Boulder, Colorado: 

Westview Press, 1987. 
Tucker, Robert C. Stalin as Revolutionary, 1879-1929. New York: 

Norton, 1977. 

Tucker, Robert C. (ed.). Stalinism: Essays in Historical Interpretation. 

New York: Norton, 1977. 
Ulam, Adam B. Expansion and Coexistence: Soviet Foreign Policy, 

1917-1973. (2d ed.) New York: Praeger, 1974. 

A History of Soviet Russia. New York: Praeger, 1976. 

Stalin: The Man and His Era. New York: Viking Press, 1973. 



900 



Bibliography 



Chapter 3 

Alexiev, Alexander R., and S. Enders Wimbush (eds.). Ethnic 

Minorities in the Red Army: Asset or Liability? (Rand Corporation 

Research Study.) Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1988. 
Bestuzhev-Lada, Igor'. "SSSR 2017," Nedelia [Moscow], Nos. 45- 

46, November 1987, 12-14. 
Borisov, V.A., G.P. Kiseleva, Iu. M. Lukashuk, and A.B. Sinel'- 

nikov. Vosproizvodstvo naseleniia i demograficheskaia politika v SSSR. 

Moscow: Nauka, 1987. 
"Chislennost' naseleniia, ego rost i razmeshchenie." Pages 7-18 

in L.M. Volodarskii (ed.), Naselenie SSSR. Moscow: Politizdat, 

1983. 

Cole, J. P. Geography of the Soviet Union. Cambridge: Cambridge 
University Press, 1984. 

Dienes, Leslie. Soviet Asia: Economic Development and National Policy 
Choices. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1987. 

Feshbach, Murray. The Soviet Population Policy Debate: Actors and Issues. 
(Project Air Force, No. N-2472-AF.) Santa Monica, Califor- 
nia: Rand, 1986. 

"Trends in the Soviet Muslim Population — Demographic 

Aspects." Pages 297-322 in United States Congress, 97th, 2d 
Session, Joint Economic Committee, Soviet Economy in the 1980's: 
Problems and Prospects. Washington: GPO, 1983. 

Gel'fand, Vladimir. "Skol'ko nas? Kakie my?" Nedelia [Moscow], 
No. 37, 1987, 21. 

Gosudarstvennyi komitet po statistike. Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR v 
1987 g. Moscow: Finansy i statistika, 1988. 

Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR za 70 let. Moscow: Finansy i 

statistika, 1987. 

. Naselenie SSSR, 1987: Statisticheskii sbornik. Moscow: Finansy 

i statistika, 1988. 
Gur'ev, V.I. "436 stranits o nas," Nedelia [Moscow], No. 44, 

November 1988, 12-13. 
Hooson, David. The Soviet Union: People and Regions. London: 

University of London Press, 1966. 
Howe, G. Melvyn (ed.). The Soviet Union: A Geographical Survey. 

(World's Landscapes Series.) Plymouth: Macdonald and Evans, 

1983. 

Izvestiia [Moscow], April 29, 1989, 1-2. 

Khorev, B.S. "On Basic Directions of Environmental Policy in 
the USSR," Soviet Geography, No. 9, September 1987. 

Kingkade, W. Ward. "Demographic Trends in the Soviet Union." 
Pages 166-86 in United States Congress, 100th, 1st Session, Joint 



901 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Economic Committee, Gorbachev's Economic Plans. (2 vols.) 
Washington: GPO, 1987. 

"Recent and Prospective Population Growth in the 

U.S.S.R., 1979-2025," Soviet Geography, No. 4, April 1988, 
394-412. 

Kotlyakov, V.M. "Geography and Ecological Problems," Soviet 

Geography, No. 6, June 1988, 569-76. 
Kravchenko, M. "Kakaia sem'ia nam nuzhna," Nedelia [Moscow], 

No. 47, November 1987, 17-18. 
Kvasha, A. Ia. Demograficheskaia politika v SSSR. Moscow: Finansy 

i statistika. 

Lydolph, Paul E. Geography of the U.S.S.R. Elkhart Lake, Wiscon- 
sin: Misty Valley, 1979. 

Medish, Vadim. The Soviet Union. (3d ed.) Englewood Cliffs, New 
Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1987. 

Micklin, Philip. "The Status of the Soviet Union's North-South 
Water Transfer Projects Before Their Abandonment in 1985- 
86," Soviet Geography, No. 5, May 1986, 287-329. 

"Naselenie SSSR," Ekonomicheskaia gazeta [Moscow], No. 43, Oc- 
tober 1986, 6-7. 

"Naselenie SSSR," Vestnik statistiki [Moscow], No. 12, Decem- 
ber 1987, 44-53. 

"O predvaritel'nykh itogakh vsesoiuznoi perepisi naseleniia 1989 
goda," Sovetskaia Rossiia [Moscow], No. 99, April 29, 1989, 1-2. 

"Osnovnyye itogi vyborochnogo sotsial'no-demograficheskogo ob- 
sledovaniia naseleniia SSSR 1985 goda," Vestnik statistiki, No. 6, 
June 1986, 53-55. 

Parker, William Henry. The Soviet Union. (World's Landscapes 
Series.) New York: Longman Group, 1983. 

Petrunia, V. "Skol'ko nas, kakie my?" Sovetskaia Litva [Vilnius], 
No. 7, January 9, 1988, 3. 

Pryde, Philip. "The Future Environmental Agenda of the USSR," 
Soviet Geography, No. 6, June 1988, 555-67. 

Rapawy, Stephen, and Godfrey Baldwin. "Demographic Trends 
in the Soviet Union: 1950-2000." Pages 265-96 in United States 
Congress, 97th, 2d Session, Joint Economic Committee, Soviet 
Economy in the 1980's: Problems and Prospects. Washington: GPO, 
1983. 

Riabushkin, T.V. (ed.). Sovetskaia demografiia za 70 let. Moscow: 
Nauka, 1987. 

Rom, V. (ed.). Ekonomicheskaia i sotsiaVnaia geografiia SSSR, 1. 

Moscow: Prosveshchenie, 1986. 
Rybakovskii, L.L. Migratsiia naseleniia: prognozy, faktory, politika. 

Moscow: Nauka, 1987. 



902 



Bibliography 



Shabad, Theodore. "Geographic Aspects of the New Soviet Five- 
Year Plan, 1986-90," Soviet Geography, 27, No. 1, January 1986, 
1-16. 

. "Population Trends of Soviet Cities, 1970-1984," Soviet 

Geography, No. 2, February 1985. 
Shabad, Theodore (panel chairman). "Panel on the Soviet Union 

in the Year 2000," Soviet Geography, No. 6, June 1987, 388-408. 
Solov'ev, E. "Emigratsiia: novaia volna?" Nedelia [Moscow], 

No. 22, May 29-June 4, 1989, 12. 
Tochenov, V.V. (ed.). Atlas SSSR. Moscow: GUGK, 1983. 
Topilin, A. "Osnovnye napravleniia mezhrespublikanskoi migratsii 

naseleniia," Planovoe khoziaistvo [Moscow], No. 1, January 1988, 

86-91. 

Trehub, Aaron. "New Figures on Infant Mortality in the USSR, ' ' 
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulle- 
tin [Munich], No. 438, October 29, 1987, 1-3. 

United States. Central Intelligence Agency. USSR Energy Atlas. 
Washington: GPO, 1985. 

Congress. 97th, 2d Session. Joint Economic Committee. 

Soviet Economy in the 1980's: Problems and Prospects. Washington: 
GPO, 1983. 

Congress. 100th, 1st Session. Joint Economic Commit- 
tee. Gorbachev's Economic Plans. (2 vols.) Washington: GPO, 1987. 

Vasil'eva, E.K., I.I. Yeliseeva, O.N. Kashira, and V.I. Laptev. 
Dinamika naseleniia SSSR 1960-1980 godov. Moscow: Finansy i 
statistika, 1985. 

Vedeneeva, I. "Shag poslednii," Ogonek [Moscow], No. 3, Janu- 
ary 1989, 14-17. 

Vishnevskii, A.G. (ed.). BrachnosV, rozhdaemost ', smertnost' v Rossii 
i v SSSR. Moscow: Statistika, 1977. 

Yelizarov, Valerii. "150,000,000," Nedelia [Moscow], No. 37, 
1987, 20. 

Zvidrin'sh, P.P., and M.A. Zvidrinia. Naselenie i ekonomika. 
(Populiarnaia demografiia.) Moscow: Mysl', 1987. 



Chapter 4 

"Activists Call for 'German Autonomy'," Pravda [Moscow], 
April 2, 1989. Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Daily 
Report: Soviet Union. (FBIS-SOV-89-063.) April 4, 1989, 55. 

Akiner, Shirin. Islamic Peoples of the Soviet Union. (2d ed.) London: 
KPI, 1986. 



903 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Alexiev, Alexander R. Dissent and Nationalism in the Soviet Baltic. Santa 

Monica, California: Rand, 1983. 
Alexiev, Alexander R. , and S. Enders Wimbush. The Ethnic Factor 

in the Soviet Armed Forces. Santa Monica, California: Rand, 1983. 
Allworth, Edward (ed.). Nationality Group Survival in Multi-Ethnic 

States: Shifting Support Patterns in the Soviet Baltic Region. New York: 

Praeger, 1977. 

Soviet Nationality Problems. New York: Columbia Univer- 
sity Press, 1971. 

Tatars of the Crimea: Their Struggle for Survival. Durham: Duke 

University Press, 1988. 

Altshuler, Mordechai. Soviet Jewry since the Second World War: Popu- 
lation and Social Structure. New York: Greenwood Press, 1987. 

Altstadt, Audrey L. "Nagorno-Karabakh: 'Apple of Discord' in 
the Azerbaydzhan SSR," Central Asian Survey [Oxford], 7, No. 4, 
1988, 63-78. 

Anderson, John. Religion and the Soviet State: A Report on Religious 
Repression in the USSR on the Occasion of the Christian Millennium. 
Washington: Puebla Institute, 1988. 

Antic, Oxana. "First Publication of Official Statistics on Churches 
in the USSR," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty 
Research Bulletin [Munich], January, 11, 1988, 1-5. 

"Kharchev Replaced as Chairman of Council for Reli- 
gious Affairs," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Report on the 
USSR [Munich], 1, No. 31, August 4, 1989, 1-6. 

"No Respite for Pentecostals in Chuguevka," Radio Free 

Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulletin [Munich], 
January 18, 1988, 1-4. 

"Policy Towards Unofficial Religious Groups under Gor- 
bachev," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research 
Bulletin [Munich], March 31, 1988, 1-8. 

"Religion in Lithuania during 1987," Radio Free Europe/ 

Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulletin [Munich], August 25, 
1988, 1-5. 

"Religious Policy under Gorbachev," Radio Free Eu- 
rope/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulletin [Munich], Sep- 
tember 28, 1987, 1-5. 

"Soviet Law and the Religious Upbringing of Children," 

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulle- 
tin [Munich], September 19, 1986, 1-4. 

"An Appeal for Religious in the Soviet Union," This World, Fall 
1988, 50-65. 

Aron, Leon. "Gorbachev's Mounting Nationalities Crisis," Heritage 
Foundation Backgrounder, No. 695, March 1989, 1-12. 



904 



Bibliography 



Azrael, Jeremy R. (ed.). Soviet Nationality Policies and Practices. New 

York: Praeger, 1978. 
Bagramov, Eduard. One Hundred Nationalities: One People. Moscow: 

Progress, 1982. 

Balzer, Marjorie M. "Ethnicity Without Power: The Siberian 
Khauty in Soviet Society," Slavic Review, 42, No. 4, Winter 1983, 
633-48. 

Bennigsen, Alexandre. "Marxism or Pan-Islamism: Russian 
Bolsheviks and Tatar National Communists at the Beginning 
of the Civil War, July 1918," Central Asian Survey [Oxford], 6, 
No. 2, 1987, 55-66. 

. "Unrest in the World of Soviet Islam, ' ' Third World Quar- 
terly [London], 10, April 1988, 770-86. 

Bennigsen, Alexandre, and S. Enders Wimbush. Muslims of the Soviet 
Empire: The Guide. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986. 

. Mystics and Commissars: Sufism in the Soviet Union. Berkeley: 
University of California Press, 1985. 

Besancon, Alain. "The Nationalities Issue in the USSR," Survey 
[London], 30, June 1989, 113-30. 

Bialer, Seweryn (ed.). Politics, Society, and Nationality: Inside Gor- 
bachev's Russia. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1988. 

Bilinsky, Yaroslaw. "Nationality Policy in Gorbachev's First 
Year," Orbis, 30, Summer 1986, 331-42. 

Bilocerkowycz, Jaroslaw. Soviet Ukrainian Dissent: A Study of Politi- 
cal Alienation. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1988. 

Birch, Julian. "Border Disputes and Disputed Borders in the Soviet 
Federal System," Nationalities Papers, 15, Spring 1987, 43-70. 

"The 1986 Party Program and the National Minorities 

in the USSR," Nationalities Papers, 15, Fall 1987, 147-57. 

Bociurkiw, Bohdan R. "Religion and Nationalism in the Contem- 
porary Ukraine." Pages 81-93 in George W. Simmonds (ed.), 
Nationalism in the USSR and Eastern Europe. Detroit: Detroit Univer- 
sity Press, 1977. 

. "The Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church." 

Pages 309-19 in Pedro Ramet (ed.), Eastern Christianity and Poli- 
tics in the Twentieth Century. Durham: Duke University Press, 1988. 

Ukrainian Churches under Soviet Rule: Two Case Studies. 

(Millennium of Christianity in Rus'-Ukraine Series.) Cambridge: 
Harvard University Ukrainian Studies Fund, 1984. 

Bohr, Annette. "A Belated Step in the Repatriation of the Chechen 
and Ingush," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty 
Research Bulletin [Munich], April 19, 1988, 1-5. 

"Breaking the Silence: The Mass Deportation of Koreans 

under Stalin," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty 
Research Bulletin [Munich], September 1, 1988, 1-4. 



905 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Brown, Bess. "Religion in Tajikistan: A Tough Nut for the Ideolo- 
gists," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research 
Bulletin [Munich], January 13, 1988, 1-7. 

"Tajik Survey Reveals Extent of Religious Belief," Radio 

Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulletin 
[Munich], March 31, 1988, 1-3. 

Bruchis, Michael. "The Language Policy of the Soviet Communist 
Party: Comments and Observations," East European Quarterly, 
21, June 1987, 231-57. 

Bungs, Dzintra. "The Deportation of Baits to the USSR: Still a 
Touchy Subject," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free 
Europe Research [Munich], 13, No. 23, June 10, 1988, 1-6. 

Burg, Steven L. "The Soviet Union's Nationalities Question," 
Current History, 88, No. 540, October 1989, 341-44, 359-62. 

"Chislennost' naseleniia, ego rost i razmeshchenie." Pages 7-18 
in L.M. Volodarskii (ed.), Naselenie SSSR. Moscow: Politizdat, 
1983. 

Clem, Ralph S. "Recent Demographic Trends among Soviet Na- 
tionalities and Their Implications." Pages 37-44 in George W. 
Simmonds (ed.), Nationalism in the USSR and Eastern Europe. 
Detroit: Detroit University Press, 1977. 

. The Soviet West: Interplay Between Nationality and Social Or- 
ganization. (Studies in International Politics and Government 
Series.) New York: Praeger, 1975. 

Conquest, Robert (ed.). The Last Empire: Nationality and the Soviet 
Future. Stanford, California: Hoover Institution Press, 1986. 

Soviet Nationalities Policy in Practice. London: Bodley Head, 

1967. 

Critchlow, James. "Islam and Nationalism in Soviet Central Asia." 
Pages 104-20 in Pedro Ramet (ed.), Religion and Nationalism in 
Soviet and East European Politics. Durham: Duke Press Policy 
Studies, 1984. 

. "Nationalism in Uzbekistan in the Brezhnev Era." Pages 

306-15 in George W. Simmonds (ed.), Nationalism in the USSR 
and Eastern Europe. Detroit: Detroit University Press, 1977. 

Dadrian, Vahakn N. "Nationalism in Soviet Armenia: A Case 
Study of Ethnocentrism." Pages 202-58 in George W. Simmonds 
(ed.), Nationalism in the USSR and Eastern Europe. Detroit: Detroit 
University Press, 1977. 

de Lageard, Helene A. "The Revolt of the Basmachi According 
to Red Army Journals (1920-1922)," Central Asian Survey [Ox- 
ford], 6, No. 3, 1987, 1-35. 

D'Encansse, Helene C. Islam and the Russian Empire: Reform and Revolu- 
tion in Central Asia. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966. 



906 



Bibliography 



Dreifelds, Juris. "Latvian National Demands and Group Con- 
sciousness since 1959." Pages 136-56 in George W. Simmonds 
(ed.), Nationalism in the USSR and Eastern Europe. Detroit: Detroit 
University Press, 1977. 

Duncan, Peter J. "The Fate of Russian Nationalism: the Samiz- 
dat Journal Veche Revisited," Religion in Communist Lands [Chisle- 
hurst, United Kingdom], 16, Spring 1988, 36-53. 

Dunlop, John B. "The Contemporary Russian Nationalist Spec- 
trum," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research 
Bulletin [Munich], Special Edition, December 19, 1988, 1-10. 

. The Faces of Contemporary Russian Nationalism. Princeton: 

Princeton University Press, 1983. 

Dzyuba, Ivan. Internationalism or Russification? A Study in the Soviet 
Nationalities Problem. New York: Monad Press, 1974. 

Ellis, Jane. "New Soviet Thinking on Religion," Religion in Com- 
munist Lands [Chislehurst, United Kingdom] , 17, Summer 1989, 
100-11. 

The Russian Orthodox Church: A Contemporary History. 

Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986. 
"The Events in Kazakhstan: An Eyewitness Report," Central Asian 

Survey [Oxford], 6, No. 3, 1987, 73-75. 
Fedoseyev, P.N. Leninism and the National Question. Moscow: 

Progress, 1977. 

Fraser, Glenda. "Basmachi — I," Central Asian Survey [Oxford], 6, 

No. 1, 1987, 1-73. 
. "Basmachi — II," Central Asian Survey [Oxford], 6, No. 2, 

1987, 7-42. 

Germroth, David S. "The Soviet Republics and Nationalism," 
Global Affairs, 4, Spring 1989, 140-57. 

Gililov, S. The Nationalities Question: Lenin 's Approach (Theory and Prac- 
tice in the USSR). Moscow: Progress, 1983. 

Girnius, Kestutis K. "Nationalism and the Catholic Church in 
Lithuania." Pages 82-103 in Pedro Ramet (ed.), Religion and 
Nationalism in Soviet and East European Politics. Durham: Duke Press 
Policy Studies, 1984. 

Gitelman, Zvi Y. "The Jewish Question in the USSR since 1964." 
Pages 324-34 in George W. Simmonds (ed.), Nationalism in the 
USSR and Eastern Europe. Detroit: Detroit University Press, 1977. 

Goldhagen, Erich (ed.). Ethnic Minorities in the Soviet Union. New 
York: Praeger, 1968. 

Goldman, Marshall I. "The USSR's New Class Struggle," World 
Monitor, 2, February 1989, 46-50. 

Gosudarstvennyi komitet po statistike. Natsionalnyi sostav naseleniia, 
ChasV II. Moscow: Finansy i statistika, 1989. 



907 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Hammer, Darrell P. "Glasnost' and 'The Russian Idea'," Radio 
Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulletin 
[Munich], Special Edition, December 19, 1988, 11-24. 

Hegaard, Steven E. "Nationalism in Azerbaydzhan in the Era of 
Brezhnev." Pages 188-99 in George W. Simmonds (ed.), Na- 
tionalism in the USSR and Eastern Europe. Detroit: Detroit Univer- 
sity Press, 1977. 

Hetmanek, Allen. "National Renascence in Soviet Kazakhstan: 
The Brezhnev Era." Pages 295-305 in George W. Simmonds 
(ed.), Nationalism in the USSR and Eastern Europe. Detroit: Detroit 
University Press, 1977. 

Hill, Kent R. The Puzzle of the Soviet Church: An Inside Look at Chris- 
tianity and Glasnost. Portland, Oregon: Multnomah Press, 1989. 

Hvat, Ivan. "The Ukrainian Catholic Church, the Vatican, and 
the Soviet Union During the Pontificate of Pope John Paul II," 
Religion in Communist Lands [Chislehurst, United Kingdom], 11, 
No. 3, Winter 1983, 264-80. 

Isajiw, Wsewolod, W. "Social Bases of Change in the Ukraine since 
1964." Pages 58-62 in George W. Simmonds (ed.), Nationalism 
in the USSR and Eastern Europe. Detroit: Detroit University Press, 
1977. 

Karklins, Rasma. Ethnic Relations in the USSR: The Perspective from 
Below. Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1986. 

Katz, Zev (ed.). Handbook of Major Soviet Nationalities. New York: 
Free Press, 1975. 

Kingkade, W. Ward. "USSR: Estimates and Projections of the 
Population by Major Nationality, 1979 to 2050." (Center for 
International Research Staff Paper No. 41.) Washington: Depart- 
ment of the Interior, Bureau of the Census, Center for Interna- 
tional Research, May 1988. 

Kipel, Vitaut. "Some Demographic and Industrial Aspects of Soviet 
Belorussia during 1965-1975." Pages 96-104 in George W. Sim- 
monds (ed.), Nationalism in the USSR and Eastern Europe. Detroit: 
Detroit University Press, 1977. 

Klier, John Doyle. Russia Gathers Her Jews: The Origins of the 'Jew- 
ish Question 3 in Russia, 1772-1825. Dekalb: Northern Illinois 
University Press, 1986. 

Koropeckyj, I.S. "Soviet Statistics on Ukraine: Selective Omis- 
sions," Problems of Communism, May- August 1988, 95-100. 

Kreindler, Isabelle. The Mordvinians: A Doomed Soviet Nationality? 
(Soviet and East European Research Centre Series.) Jerusalem: 
Soviet and East European Research Centre, 1984. 

Kudryavtsev, V.N. (ed.). The Soviet Constitution: A Dictionary. 
Moscow: Progress, 1986. 



908 



Bibliography 



Kuzio, Taras. "Nationalist Ferment in Western Ukraine," Soviet 
Analyst [Richmond, Surrey, United Kingdom], 17, No. 15, Au- 
gust 3, 1988, 4-5. 

"Nationalist Riots in Kazakhstan," Central Asian Survey 

[Oxford], 7, No. 4, 1988, 79-100. 

Landsbergis, Algirdas. "The Organic and the Synthetic: A Dia- 
lectical Dance." Pages 181-86 in George W. Simmonds (ed.), 
Nationalism in the USSR and Eastern Europe. Detroit: Detroit Univer- 
sity Press, 1977. 

Lapidus, Gail Warshosky. "Gorbachev's Nationalities Problem," 
Foreign Affairs, 68, No. 4, Fall 1989, 92-108. 

Lenin, Vladimir I. Questions of National Policy and Proletarian Inter- 
nationalism. Moscow: Progress, 1970. 

Levin, Nora. The Jews in the Soviet Union since 1917. (2 vols.) New 
York: New York University Press, 1988. 

Lubin, Nancy. Labour and Nationality in Soviet Central Asia. Prince- 
ton: Princeton University Press, 1984. 

Mandel, William M. Soviet But Not Russian: The 'Other' Peoples of 
the Soviet Union. Palo Alto, California: Ramparts Press, 1984. 

Markus, Vasyl. "Religion and Nationalism in Ukraine." Pages 
59-80 in Pedro Ramet (ed.), Religion and Nationalism in Soviet and 
East European Politics. Durham: Duke Press Policy Studies, 1984. 

Meerson, Michael A. "The Doctrinal Foundations of Orthodoxy." 
Pages 20-36 in Pedro Ramet (ed.), Eastern Christianity and Poli- 
tics in the Twentieth Century. Durham: Duke University Press, 1988. 

Mihalisko, Kathleen. "Belorussian Activists Charged with Violating 
Law of Assembly," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio 
Liberty Research Bulletin [Munich], September 28, 1988, 1-3. 

. "Historian Outlines Revisionist View of Belorussia's 

Past," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research 
Bulletin [Munich], September 28, 1988, 1-5. 

. ' 'A Profile of Informal Patriotic Youth Groups in Belorus- 

sia," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research 
Bulletin [Munich], July 27, 1988, 1-6. 

Miller, ]a.c)n. Jews in Soviet Culture. London: Institute of Jewish Af- 
fairs, 1984. 

Miller, Marshall L. "Between Moscow and Mecca: Ethnic Minori- 
ties in the Soviet Union," Armed Forces Journal International, 124, 
March 1987, 26-27. 

Motyl, Alexander J. "The Sobering of Gorbachev: Nationality, 
Restructuring, and the West." Pages 149-73 in Seweryn Bialer 
(ed.), Politics, Society, and Nationality: Inside Gorbachev's Russia. Boul- 
der, Colorado: Westview Press, 1988. 



909 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Mouradian, Claire Seda. ''The Armenian Apostolic Church." 
Pages 353-74 in Pedro Ramet (ed.), Eastern Christianity and Poli- 
tics in the Twentieth Century. Durham: Duke University Press, 1988. 

Murat, Aman B., and George W. Simmonds. "Nationalism in 
Turkmenistan since 1964." Pages 316-21 in George W. Sim- 
monds (ed.), Nationalism in the USSR and Eastern Europe. Detroit: 
Detroit University Press, 1977. 

Nahaylo, Bohdan. "Concern Voiced about Six Million Ukraini- 
ans Condemned to 'Denationalization'," Radio Free Europe/Ra- 
dio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulletin [Munich], February 
27, 1988, 1-7. 

"Four Decades of Resistance: An Interview with Danylo 

Shumuk," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty 
Research Bulletin [Munich], August 25, 1987, 1-25. 

"Independent Groups in the Ukraine under Attack," 

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulle- 
tin [Munich], September 28, 1988, 1-5. 

. "Initiative Group for Restoration of Ukrainian Auto- 

cephalous Orthodox Church Founded," Radio Free Europe/ 
Radio Liberty, Report on the USSR [Munich], 1, No. 9, March 
3, 1989, 24-27. 

"National Ferment in Moldavia," Radio Free Europe/ 

Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulletin [Munich], Janu- 
ary 24, 1988, 1-10. 

. "Political Demonstration in Minsk Attests to Belorussian 

National Assertiveness," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 
Radio Liberty Research Bulletin [Munich], November 26, 1987, 1-5. 

"Representatives of Non-Russian National Movements 

Establish Coordinating Committee," Radio Free Europe/Radio 
Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulletin [Munich] , June 22, 1988, 
1-7. 

. "Ukrainian Writers' Plenum Reveals Growing Frustra- 
tion and Radicalization," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 
Radio Liberty Research Bulletin [Munich], August 10, 1988, 1-8. 

Nahaylo, Bohdan, and C.J. Peters. The Ukrainians and Georgians. 
London: Minority Rights Group, 1981. 

Newman, Sally. "Soviet Scholars Advocate Fostering Cultures of 
National Minorities," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio 
Liberty Research Bulletin [Munich], June 29, 1988, 1-3. 

Nichol, James P. "Political Selection and Life History Types in 
the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet 
Union." (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Washington, March 
1982.) Ann Arbor: University Microfilms International, 1982. 



910 



Bibliography 



Nichols, Mary F. Problems and Prospects of Soviet Nationalities. Meerut: 
Arm Prakashan, 1982. 

Novak, Michael. "Toward an Open Soviet Union," Freedom at Issue, 
No. 96, May-June 1987, 9-12. 

Olcott, Martha Brill. The Kazakhs. Stanford, California: Hoover 
Institution Press, 1987. 

. "Yuri Andropov and the 'National Question'," Soviet 

Studies, 37, No. 1, January 1985, 103-17. 

Orr, Michael. "Soviet Armed Forces and the Nationalities 
Problem," Soviet Analyst [Howe, Sussex, United Kingdom], 18, 
April 5, 1989, 5-7. " 

Parming, Tonu. "Nationalism in Soviet Estonia since 1964." Pages 
116-34 in George W. Simmonds (ed.), Nationalism in the USSR 
and Eastern Europe. Detroit: Detroit University Press, 1977. 

Parsons, Howard L. Christianity Today in the USSR. New York: In- 
ternational, 1987. 

Penikis, Janis J. "Latvian Nationalism: Preface to a Dissenting 
View." Pages 157-61 in George W. Simmonds (ed.), National- 
ism in the USSR and Eastern Europe. Detroit: Detroit University 
Press, 1977. 

Perfecky, George A. "The Status of the Ukrainian Language in 
the Ukrainian SSR," East European Quarterly, 21, No. 2, June 
1987, 207-30. 

Peters, C.J. "The Georgian Orthodox Church." Pages 286-308 
in Pedro Ramet (ed.), Eastern Christianity and Politics in the Twen- 
tieth Century. Durham: Duke University Press, 1988. 

Pinkus, Benjamin. The Jews of the Soviet Union: The History of a Na- 
tional Minority. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. 

Pirzada, Shaziae. "Federalism in the USSR: The Central Asian 
Context," Strategic Studies [Islamabad], 10, Winter 1987, 67-94. 

Popp, Gary E., and Syed T. Anwar. "From Perestroika to Eth- 
nic Nationalism," International Perspectives [Ottawa], 18, March- 
April 1989, 21-23. 

Pospielovsky, Dmitry V. A History of Marxist-Leninist Atheism and 
Soviet Antireligious Policies. (History of Soviet Atheism in Theory 
and Practice, and the Believer Series.) New York: St. Martin's 
Press, 1987. 

"The Neo-Slavophile Trend and Its Relation to the Con- 
temporary Religious Revival in the USSR." Pages 41-58 in 
Pedro Ramet (ed.), Religion and Nationalism in Soviet and East Eu- 
ropean Politics. Durham: Duke Press Policy Studies, 1984. 

Soviet Antireligious Campaigns and Persecutions, 2. (History of 

Soviet Atheism in Theory and Practice, and the Believer Series.) 
New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988. 



911 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Preobrazhensky, Alexander (ed.). The Russian Orthodox Church: 10th 
to 20th Centuries. Moscow: Progress, 1988. 

Pushkarev, Sergei, Vladimir Rusak, and Gleb Yakunin. Christianity 
and Government in Russia and the Soviet Union: Reflections on the Millen- 
nium. (Change in Contemporary Soviet Society Series.) Boul- 
der, Colorado: Westview Press, 1989. 

Pyle, Emily. "Calls for Legalization of Ukrainian Catholic 
Church," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Report on the USSR 
[Munich], 1, No. 29, July 21, 1988, 24-27. 

Rakowska-Harmstone, Teresa. "Nationalism in Soviet Central 
Asia since 1964." Pages 272-94 in George W. Simmonds (ed.), 
Nationalism in the USSR and Eastern Europe. Detroit: Detroit Univer- 
sity Press, 1977. 

"The Study of Ethnic Politics in the USSR." Pages 20-36 

in George W. Simmonds (ed.), Nationalism in the USSR and Eastern 
Europe. Detroit: Detroit University Press, 1977. 

Ramet, Pedro. "Autocephaly and National Identity in Church- 
State Relations in Eastern Christianity: An Introduction." Pages 
3-19 in Pedro Ramet (ed.), Eastern Christianity and Politics in the 
Twentieth Century. Durham: Duke University Press, 1988. 

Cross and Commissar: The Politics of Religion in Eastern Eu- 
rope and the USSR. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987. 

' 'The Interplay of Religious Policy and Nationalities Policy 

in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe." Pages 3-30 in Pedro 
Ramet (ed.), Religion and Nationalism in Soviet and East European 
Politics. Durham: Duke Press Policy Studies, 1984. 

Ramet, Pedro (ed.). Eastern Christianity and Politics in the Twentieth 
Century. Durham: Duke University Press, 1988. 

Religion and Nationalism in Soviet and East European Politics. 

Durham: Duke Press Policy Studies, 1984. 

Rapawy, Stephen. "Census Data on Nationality Composition and 
Language Characteristics of the Soviet Population: 1959, 1970, 
and 1979." (Research paper.) Washington: Department of the 
Interior, Bureau of the Census, Foreign Demographic Analysis 
Division, January 1982. 

Raun, Toivo U. Estonia and the Estonians. Stanford, California: 
Hoover Institution Press, 1987. 

Remeikis, Thomas. "Political Developments in Lithuania Dur- 
ing the Brezhnev Era." Pages 164-80 in George W. Simmonds 
(ed.), Nationalism in the USSR and Eastern Europe. Detroit: Detroit 
University Press, 1977. 

Remnick, David. "Key Soviet Official Urges New Rights for Re- 
ligious Believers," Washington Post, December 23, 1988, A12. 



912 



Bibliography 



Rorlich, Azade-Ayse. The Volga Tatars: A Profile in National Resilience. 
Stanford, California: Hoover Institution Press, 1986. 

Rozitis, Ojars. "The Rise of Latvian Nationalism," Swiss Review 
of World Affairs [Zurich], 38, February 1989, 24-26. 

Rubenstein, Joshua. Soviet Dissidents: Their Struggle for Human Rights. 
(2d ed.) Boston: Beacon Press, 1985. 

Rywkin, Michael. "Islam and the New Soviet Man: 70 Years of 
Evolution," Central Asian Survey [Oxford], 6, No. 4, 1987, 23-32. 

Rywkin, Michael (ed.). Russian Colonial Expansion to 1917. Lon- 
don: Mansell, 1988. 

Sakwa, Richard. Soviet Politics: An Introduction. London: Routledge, 
1989. 

Sallnow, John. "Belorussia: The Demographic Transition and the 
Settlement Network in the 1980s," Soviet Geography, 28, Janu- 
ary 1987, 25-33. 

Sawczuk, Konstantyn. "Resistance Against Russification in the 
Ukraine since 1964: A Profile of Three Ukrainians in Opposi- 
tion." Pages 63-71 in George W. Simmonds (ed.), Nationalism 
in the USSR and Eastern Europe. Detroit: Detroit University Press, 
1977. 

Sheehy, Ann. "Interethnic Relations in the Soviet Armed Forces," 
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulle- 
tin [Munich], June 29, 1988, 1-5. 

. "Kazakh Minister Defends Territorial Integrity of 

Kazakhstan," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty 
Research Bulletin [Munich], June 29, 1988, 1-3. 

. "Migration to RSFSR and Baltic Republics Continues, ' ' 

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulle- 
tin [Munich], November 30, 1987, 1-9. 

"Moldavians Gain Some Language Concessions," Radio 

Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulletin 
[Munich], August 27, 1987, 1-5. 

Shtromas, Alex. "Soviet Occupation of the Baltic States and Their 
Incorporation into the USSR: Political and Legal Aspects," East 
European Quarterly, 19, September 1985, 289-304. 

Sieff, Martin, and Boris Shragin. "Will the Soviet Union Survive 
until 1994?," National Review, 41, April 7, 1989, 24, 26-28, 30. 

Simmonds, George W. (ed.). Nationalism in the USSR and Eastern 
Europe. Detroit: Detroit University Press, 1977. 

Sinyawsky, Andrei. "Russian Nationalism," Radio Free Europe/ 
Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulletin [Munich], Special 
Edition, December 19, 1988, 25-36. 

Solchanyk, Roman. "Belorussian Informal Groups Criticized for 
Nationalism," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty 
Research Bulletin [Munich], November 16, 1988, 1-4. 



913 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



- "Belorussian Ministry of Education Accused of Sabotag- 
ing the Native Language," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 
Radio Liberty Research Bulletin [Munich], November 10, 1986, 1-3. 

. "Catastrophic Language Situation in Major Ukrainian 

Cities," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research 
Bulletin [Munich], July 15, 1987, 1-5. 

"Letters to Belorussian Weekly Evidence Strong Support 

for Native Language," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio 
Liberty Research Bulletin [Munich], November 9, 1989, 1-5. 

. " Shcherbitsky on Nationalism and Religion," Radio Free 

Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulletin [Munich], 
April 6, 1987, 1-5. 

"A Strong Center and Strong Republics: The CPSU's 

Draft 'Platform' on Nationalities Policy," Radio Free Europe/ 
Radio Liberty, Report on the USSR, No. 35, September 1, 1989, 
1-4. 

. "Ukrainians and Belorussians Focus on Language and 

Ecology," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty 
Research Bulletin [Munich], April 6, 1988, 1-5. 

"Ukrainians in Moscow and Leningrad Organize," Radio 

Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulletin [Mu- 
nich], September 5, 1988, 1-4. 

Soper, John. "Classical Central Asian Language to be Taught in 
Uzbek Schools?," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio 
Liberty Research Bulletin [Munich], June 29, 1988, 1-4. 

"Kirgiz Intelligentsia Seeking to Lessen Russian Influence 

on Native Language," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio 
Liberty Research Bulletin [Munich], September 24, 1987, 1-5. 

. "Nationality Issues under Review in Kirgizia," Radio 

Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulletin [Mu- 
nich], January 29, 1988, 1-10. 

"Soviet Police Break Up Minsk Rally," Guardian [London], 
November 3, 1988. Foreign Broadcast Information Service: Daily 
Report: Soviet Union. (FBIS-SOV-88-218.) November 10, 1988, 
5-6. 

Spector, Sherman David. "The Moldavian S.S.R. 1964-74." 
Pages 260-69 in George W. Simmonds (ed.), Nationalism in the 
USSR and Eastern Europe. Detroit: Detroit University Press, 1977. 

Stepanenko, Mykola. "Ukrainian Culture in the Brezhnev-Kosygin 
Era: Some Observations." Pages 72-80 in George W. Simmonds 
(ed.), Nationalism in the USSR and Eastern Europe. Detroit: Detroit 
University Press, 1977. 

Subtelny, Orest. Ukraine: A History. Toronto: University of Toronto 
Press, 1988. 



914 



Bibliography 



Suny, Ronald G. "Russian Nationalism in the Era of Glasnost' 
and Perestroika," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio 
Liberty Research Bulletin [Munich], Special Edition, December 19, 
1988, 37-42. 

Sysyn, Frank E. The Ukrainian Orthodox Question in the USSR. (Millen- 
nium of Christianity in Rus' -Ukraine Series.) Cambridge: Har- 
vard University Ukrainian Studies Fund, 1987. 

United States. Congress. 100th, 2d Session. House of Represen- 
tatives. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe. 
Reform and Human Rights: The Gorbachev Record. Washington: GPO, 
1988. 

Department of State. Bureau of Public Affairs. "Soviet 

Repression of the Ukrainian Catholic Church." (Paper prepared 
by Bureau of Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, Spe- 
cial Report No. 159.) Washington: GPO, January 1987. 

Wimbush, S. Enders (ed.). Soviet Nationalities in Strategic Perspective. 
New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985. 

Wishnevsky, Julia. "The Origins of Pamyat," Survey [London], 
30, No. 3 (130), October 1988, 79-91. 

"A Tribute to the Crimean Tatar Movement," Radio 

Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulletin [Mu- 
nich], July 29, 1987, 1-3. 

Yanov, Alexander. "Russian Nationalism as the Ideology of Coun- 
terreform," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty 
Research Bulletin [Munich], Special Edition, December 19, 1988, 
43-52. 

Zaprudnik, Jan. "Developments in Belorussia since 1964." Pages 
105-14 in George W. Simmonds (ed.), Nationalism in the USSR 
and Eastern Europe. Detroit: Detroit University Press, 1977. 

Zaslavsky, Viktor, and Robert Brym. Soviet-Jewish Emigration and 
Soviet Nationality Policy. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1983. 



Chapter 5 

Abramkin, Vitaliy. "Health Care under the Reforms," Soviet 
Analyst [Richmond, Surrey, United Kingdom], 18, No. 2, Janu- 
ary 25, 1989, 7-8. 

Aleksandrova, Ekaterina. "Why Soviet Women Want to Get Mar- 
ried." Pages 31-50 in Tat'yana Mamonova (ed.), Women and 
Russia. Boston: Beacon Press, 1984. 

Bohr, Annette. "Abortion Is Still Number One Method of Birth 
Control in Soviet Union," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 
Radio Liberty Research Bulletin [Munich], September 13, 1988, 1-4. 



915 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Browning, Genia R. Women and Politics in the USSR: Consciousness 
Raising and Soviet Women's Groups. Sussex: Wheatsheaf Books, 
1987. 

Byrnes, Robert F. (ed.). After Brezhnev: Sources of Soviet Conduct in 
the 1980s. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983. 

Cambridge Encyclopedia of Russia and the Soviet Union. Cambridge: 
Cambridge University Press, 1982. 

Clem, Ralph S. "The Ethnic Dimension of the Soviet Union, Part 
I." Pages 11-31 in Jerry G. Pankhurst and Michael Paul Sacks 
(eds.), Contemporary Soviet Society: Sociological Perspectives. New York: 
Praeger, 1980. 

"The Ethnic Dimension of the Soviet Union, Part II." 

Pages 32-62 in Jerry G. Pankhurst and Michael Paul Sacks 
(eds.), Contemporary Soviet Society: Sociological Perspectives. New York: 
Praeger, 1980. 

Dmytryshyn, Basil. USSR: A Concise History. New York: Scribner's, 
1965. 

Dobson, Richard R. "Socialism and Social Stratification." Pages 
88-114 in Jerry G. Pankhurst and Michael Paul Sacks (eds.), 
Contemporary Soviet Society: Sociological Perspectives. New York: Prae- 
ger, 1980. 

Field, Mark G. "The Contemporary Soviet Family: Problems, Is- 
sues, Perspectives." Pages 3-29 in Maurice Friedberg and Hey- 
ward Isham (eds.), Soviet Society under Gorbachev: Current Trends 
and the Prospects for Reform. Armonk, New York: Sharpe, 1987. 

Friedberg, Maurice, and Hey ward Isham (eds.). Soviet Society under 
Gorbachev: Current Trends and the Prospects for Reform. Armonk, New 
York: Sharpe, 1987. 

Gosudarstvennyi komitet po statistike. Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR za 
70 let. Moscow: Finansy i statistika, 1987. 

Hazard, John N. The Soviet System of Government. (5th ed.) Chicago: 
University of Chicago Press, 1980. 

Herlemann, Horst (ed.). Quality of Life in the Soviet Union. Boulder, 
Colorado: Westview Press, 1987. 

Jones, Ellen, and Fred W. Grupp. Modernization, Value Change, and 
Fertility in the Soviet Union. Cambridge: Cambridge University 
Press, 1987. 

Juviler, Peter H. "Cell Mutation in the Soviet Society: The Fam- 
ily." Pages 39-57 in Terry L. Thompson and Richard Sheldon 
(eds.), Soviet Society and Culture: Essays in Honor of Vera Dunham. 
Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1988. 

Kerblay, Basile. Modern Soviet Society. New York: Pantheon, 1983. 

Lane, David. Soviet Economy and Society. New York: New York 
University Press, 1985. 



916 



Bibliography 



Lapidus, Gail Warshofsky. "Social Trends." Pages 186-249 in 
Robert F. Byrnes (ed.), After Brezhnev: Sources of Soviet Conduct in 
the 1980s. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983. 

Mamonova, Tat'yana (ed.). Women and Russia. Boston: Beacon 
Press, 1984. 

Matthews, Mervyn. "Aspects of Poverty in the Soviet Union." 

Pages 43-63 in Horst Herlemann (ed.), Quality of Life in the Soviet 

Union. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1987. 
Poverty in the Soviet Union: The Life-Styles of the Underprivileged 

in Recent Years. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. 
Privilege in the Soviet Union: A Study of Elite Life-Styles under 

Communism. London: Allen and Unwin, 1978. 
Medish, Vadim. The Soviet Union. (3d ed.) Englewood Cliffs, New 

Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1987. 
Ordena SSSR. (Bol'shaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia.) Moscow: Sovet- 

skaia entsiklopediia, 1973. 
Pankhurst, Jerry G., and Michael Paul Sacks (eds.). Contemporary 

Soviet Society: Sociological Perspectives. New York: Praeger, 1980. 
" Professional' nye soiuzy SSSR." Pages 17-18 in Ezhegodnik Bol- 

'shoi sovetskoi entsiklopedii. Moscow: Sovetskaia entsiklopediia, 

1984. 

Remnick, David. "Soviet Editor Reveals Gorbachev's Pay and 
Perks," Washington Post, February 1, 1989, Dl, Dll. 

Rimashevskaia, N., and A. Milovidov. "O sovershenstvovanii 
gosudarstvennoi pomoshchi sem'iam, imeiushchim detei," Plano- 
voe khoziaistvo, No. 1, January 1988, 82-85. 

Sacks, Michael Paul. "The Place of Women." Pages 227-50 in 
Jerry G. Pankhurst and Michael Paul Sacks (eds.), Contemporary 
Soviet Society: Sociological Perspectives. New York: Praeger, 1980. 

Sheehy, Ann. "Opposition to Family Planning in Uzbekistan and 
Tadzhikistan," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty 
Research Bulletin [Munich], April 5, 1988, 1-7. 

Smith, Gordon B. Soviet Politics: Continuity and Contradiction. New 
York: St. Martin's Press, 1988. 

"Table of Ranks." Pages 152-55 in Joseph L. Wieczynski (ed.), 
The Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History. Gulf Breeze, 
Florida: Academic International Press, 1984. 

Thaden, Edward C. Russia since 1801: The Making of a New Society. 
New York: Wiley Interscience, 1971. 

Thompson, Terry L., and Richard Sheldon (eds.). Soviet Society and 
Culture: Essays in Honor of Vera Dunham. Boulder, Colorado: West- 
view Press, 1988. 

Trehub, Aaron. "Children in the Soviet Union," Radio Free Eu- 
rope/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulletin [Munich] , De- 
cember 23, 1987, 1-9. 



917 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Tsentral'noe statisticheskoe upravlenie. ChislennosV i sostav naseleniia 

SSSR: Po dannym Vsesoiuznoi perepisi naseleniia 1979 goda. Moscow: 

Finansy i statistika, 1984. 
. SSSR v tsifrakh v 1986 godu: Kratkii statisticheskii sbornik. 

Moscow: Finansy i statistika, 1987. 
Wieczynski Joseph L. (ed.). The Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and 

Soviet History. Gulf Breeze, Florida: Academic International Press, 

1984. 

Zaslavskaya, Tat'yana. "Socioeconomic Aspects of Perestroyka, " 
Soviet Studies, 4, No. 3, October-December 1987, 313-31. 

Chapter 6 

Avis, George (ed.). The Making of the Soviet Citizen: Character Forma- 
tion and Civic Training in Soviet Education. London: Croom Helm, 
1987. 

Balzer, HarleyD. "Education, Science, and Technology. " Pages 
245-57 in James Cracraft (ed.), The Soviet Union Today: An Inter- 
pretive Guide. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. 

"Recent Soviet Education Reforms (Summary of Talk 

Presented October 19, 1986)," Kennan Institute for Advanced 
Russian Studies, Meeting Report, 1. 

Barringer, Felicity. "Top Soviet Aide Calls for Change for the 
Schools," New York Times, February 18, 1988, Al, A6. 

Bednyi, M.S. Sem'ia, zdorov'e i obshchestvo. Moscow: Mysl', 1986. 

Bloch, Sidney, and Peter Reddaway. Soviet Psychiatric Abuse: The 
Shadow over World Psychiatry. London: Victor Gollancz, 1984. 

"Bol'she voprosov, chem otvetov," Moskovskaia pravda [Moscow], 
July 17, 1987, 3. 

Brine, Jenny, Maureen Perrie, and Andrew Sutton (eds.). Home, 
School and Leisure in the Soviet Union. London: Allen and Unwin, 
1980. 

Bronfenbrenner, Urie. Two Worlds of Childhood: U.S. and U.S.S.R. 

New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1970. 
"Colleges in Soviet Union Overhauled to Spur Gorbachev 

Changes," New York Times, March 22, 1987, 18. 
Cracraft, James (ed.). The Soviet Union Today: An Interpretive Guide. 

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. 
Crisostomo, R. McDonald. Soviet Language Policy and Education in 

the Southern Tier, 1950 to 1982. Washington: Department of the 

Interior, Bureau of the Census, Center for International 

Research, 1984. 



918 



Bibliography 



Davis, Christopher. The Medical and Pharmaceutical Sectors of the Soviet 
Economy. Washington: Wharton Econometric Forecasting Asso- 
ciates, 1984. 

"Education, Science, and Culture in the USSR." Pages 189-94 
in The Soviet Union. Moscow: Progress, 1986. 

Feshbach, Murray. "Glasnost' and Health Issues in the USSR," 
KIARS Meeting Report, October 5, 1987. 

Field, Mark G. "Medical Care in the Soviet Union: Promises and 
Realities." Pages 65-82 in Horst Herlemann (ed.), Quality of 
Life in the Soviet Union. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1987. 

. "Soviet Infant Mortality," KIARS Meeting Report, Oc- 
tober 9, 1987. 

Fuller, Elizabeth. "Problems in Higher Education in Georgia," 
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulle- 
tin [Munich], October 20, 1987, 1-6. 

_. "USSR Minister of Health Cites Data on Infant Mortal- 
ity and Infectious Diseases in Two Transcaucasian Republics," 
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulle- 
tin [Munich], October 16, 1987, 1-5. 

Golyakhovsky, Vladimir. Russian Doctor. (Trans., Michael Sylvester 
and Eugene Ostrovsky.) New York: St. Martin's Press, 1984. 

Gosudarstvennyi komitet po statistike. Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR za 
70 let. Moscow: Finansy i statistika, 1987. 

"Health Care." Pages 174-75 in The Soviet Union. Washington: 
Congressional Quarterly, 1986. 

"Health Care and Physical Education." Pages 194-99 in The Soviet 
Union. Moscow: Progress, 1986. 

Hechinger, Fred M. "Education: Triumphs and Doubts." Pages 
131-65 in Harrison E. Salisbury (ed.), The Soviet Union: The Fifty 
Years. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1967. 

Herlemann, Horst (ed.). Quality of Life in the Soviet Union. Boulder, 
Colorado: Westview Press, 1987. 

Holland, Barry. "Education: Reforming the Reforms," Soviet An- 
alyst, 17, No. 5, 3-5. 

Holmes, Brian. "Soviet Education: Travellers' Tales." Pages 30-56 
in J.J. Tomiak (ed.), Western Perspectives on Soviet Education in the 
1980s. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1986. 

"Increased Smoking Among Population," Planovoe khoziaistvo 
[Moscow], No. 3, March 1988, 124. 

Jacoby, Susan. Inside Soviet Schools. New York: Hill and Wang, 1974. 

Keubart, Friedrich. "Aspects of Soviet Secondary Education: 
School Performance and Teacher Accountability." Pages 83-94 
in Horst Herlemann (ed.), Quality of Life in the Soviet Union. Boul- 
der, Colorado: Westview Press, 1987. 



919 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

''Khotim otkryt' shkolu na kooperativnykh nachalakh," Literatur- 
naia gazeta [Moscow], July 15, 1987, 10. 

Khvalynskaia, M.S. "Economic Geography of Higher Education 
in the USSR," Soviet Geography, 25, June 1984, 381-89. 

"Some Aspects of the Spatial Organization of Higher Edu- 
cation in the USSR," Soviet Geography, 27, September 1986, 
461-68. 

Knaus, William A. Inside Russian Medicine: An American Doctor's First- 
Hand Report. New York: Everest House, 1981. 

Konovalev, Valerii. "Transmission of AIDS Is Made a Criminal 
Offense," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Re- 
search Bulletin [Munich], September 21, 1987, 1-4. 

Koriagina, T.I., and Iu. E. Sheviakhov. Obshchestvennye fondy potre- 
bleniia, 3. (Novoe v zhizni, nauke, tekhnike. Seriia "Ekonomika," 
No. 3.) Moscow: Znanie, 1988. 

"Krikboli," Literaturnaia gazeta [Moscow], October 14, 1987, 12. 

Lane, David. Soviet Economy and Society. New York: New York 
University Press, 1985. 

"Lechenie? Hi — nakazanie?," Literaturnaia gazeta [Moscow] , June 17, 
1987, 2. 

Lee, Gary. "Soviets Pass Strict Law to Stem Spread of AIDS," 
Washington Post, August 26, 1987, 1. 

Liegle, Ludwig. "Education in the Family and Family Policy in 
the Soviet Union." Pages 57-74 in J.J. Tomiak (ed.), Western 
Perspectives on Soviet Education in the 1980s. New York: St. Mar- 
tin's Press, 1986. 

Long, Delbert H. "Soviet Education and the Development of Com- 
munist Ethics." Pages 327-35 in Frank M. Sorrentino and 
Frances R. Curcio (eds.), Soviet Politics and Education. Lanham, 
Maryland: University Press of America, 1986. 

McAuley, Alastair. Economic Welfare in the Soviet Union. Madison: 
University of Wisconsin Press, 1979. 

Matthews, Mervyn. "Aspects of Poverty in the Soviet Union." 
Pages 43-63 in Horst Herlemann (ed.), Quality of Life in the Soviet 
Union. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1987. 

Poverty in the Soviet Union: The Life-Styles of the Underprivileged 

in Recent Years. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. 

Medish, Vadim. The Soviet Union. (3d ed.) Englewood Cliffs, New 
Jersey: Prentice- Hall, 1987. 

Morison, John. "Recent Development in Political Education in 
the Soviet Union." Pages 23-49 in George Avis (ed.), The Making 
of the Soviet Citizen: Character Formation and Civic Training in Soviet 
Education. London: Croom Helm, 1987. 



920 



Bibliography 



Muller-Dietz, Heinz. "Die Diskussion um die Entwinklung des 
sowjetischen Gesundheitswesens," Osteuropa [Stuttgart], 1, Janu- 
ary 1988, 35-44. 

"My sebe ne proshchaem," Pravda [Moscow], August 17, 1987, 3. 

"Nastavnik pokoleniia: Uchitel' — vazhneishee deistvuiushchee litso 
perestroiki," Pravda [Moscow], March 2, 1988, 1. 

"Nastupat' naalkogol'," Pravda [Moscow], November 15, 1987, 3. 

' ' Ne mogu prostit' , ' ' Literaturnaia gazeta [Moscow] , June 17, 1 987 , 
12. 

"Obrazovanie — nepreryvnoe," Literaturnaia gazeta [Moscow], De- 
cember 2, 1987, 10. 

''Odinochestvo," Literaturnaia gazeta [Moscow], November 11, 1987, 
12. 

"O khode perestroiki srednei i vysshei shkoly i zadachakh partii 
po ee osushchestvleniiu," Pravda [Moscow], February 18, 1988, 
1-4. 

"O studentakh, prepodavateliakh i ne tol'ko o nikh," Ogonek 

[Moscow], No. 35, August 1987, 14-15. 
"Otsenku daet patsient," Trud [Moscow], May 21, 1987, 2. 
"Ozhidanie: Kak gotovitsia novyi zakon o pensiiakh," Ogonek 

[Moscow], 7, No. 7, July 1989, 31-33. 
"Perestroika dlia shkoly," Pravda [Moscow], January 2, 1988, 2. 
Petrovskiy, B. V. Novyi etap v razvitii narodnogo zdravookhraneniia SSSR. 

Moscow: Meditsina, 1981. 
"Pochemu osechka," Pravda [Moscow], September 20, 1987, 2. 
"Pomogaiut mnogodetnym materiam," Sovetskaia Rossiia [Moscow], 

October 26, 1987, 4. 
"Pomoshch' sem'e," Trud [Moscow], June 16, 1987, 2. 
Popkewitz, Thomas S., and Robert B. Tabachnik. Themes in Cur- 
rent Soviet Curriculum Reform. Lanham, Maryland: University Press 

of America, 1986. 
"Posle poludnia," Pravda [Moscow], July 21, 1987, 3. 
Powell, David E. "A Troubled Society." Pages 349-63 in James 

Cracraft (ed.), The Soviet Union Today: An Interpretive Guide. 

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. 
"Pregrady dlia SPIDa," Pravda [Moscow], June 29, 1987, 4. 
"Prophylaktisches AIDS-Zentrum in Moskau," Die Wirtschaft des 

Ostblocks [Moscow], No. 33, March 31, 1987, 3. 
"Rebenok bez osmotra," Pravda [Moscow], August 10, 1987, 4. 
Reddaway, Peter. "Soviet Psychiatry: An End to Political Abuse?," 

Survey [London], 30, No. 130, October 1988, 25-38. 
Redl, Helen B. (ed.). Soviet Educators on Soviet Education. London: 

Free Press of Glencoe Collier-MacMillan, 1964. 



921 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Remnick, David. "Painful Topic Confronts Soviets: Homeless- 
ness at Home," Washington Post, February 21, 1988, Al, A24. 

. "Soviets Cancel History Tests over Texts," Washington 

Post, June 11, 1988, Al, A21. 

Ryan, Michael, and Richard Prentice. Social Trends in the Soviet Union 
from 1950. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987. 

Salisbury, Harrison (ed.). The Soviet Union: The Fifty Years. New 
York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1967. 

"Serdtse shkoly— uchitel' , " Pravda [Moscow], January 20, 1988, 3. 

"Seventy Years after Lenin," U.S. News and World Report, Oc- 
tober 19, 1987, 30-55. 

Sheehy, Ann. "Steps to Combat Infant Mortality in Central Asian 
Republics," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty 
Research Bulletin [Munich], July 14, 1987, 1-3. 

"Shkola s uklonem v budushchee," Literaturnaia gazeta [Moscow], 
May 27, 1987, 10. 

Shuval, Judith T. Newcomers and Colleagues: Soviet Immigrant Physi- 
cians in Israel. Houston: Cap and Gown Press, 1983. 

Soper, John. "Problems in the Kazakh Educational System," 
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulle- 
tin [Munich], December 2, 1987, 1-4. 

Sorrentino, Frank M., and Frances R. Curcio (eds.). Soviet Poli- 
tics and Education. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of Amer- 
ica, 1986. 

"Soviet Authorities Worry That Shortage of Syringes May Abet 

Spread of AIDS," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free 

Europe Research [Munich], May 20, 1989, 1. 
"Soviet Health Ministry Issues Brochure about AIDS," Radio Free 

Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulletin [Munich], 

September 2, 1987, 2. 
"SPID — Opasnosti real'nye i mnimye," Trud [Moscow], July 6, 

1987, 4. 

"SPID — O pol'ze azbuchnykh istin," Literaturnaia gazeta [Moscow], 
September 16, 1987, 10. 

"SPID — Zaslon smertonosnoi 'chume'," Literaturnaia gazeta [Mos- 
cow], September 2, 1987, 1. 

Stepanov, V.K. Spetsializirovannye uchebno-lechebnye tsentry. Moscow: 
Stroizdat, 1987. 

Sternheimer, Stephen. "The Vanishing Babushka'. A Roleless Role 
for Older Soviet Women?" Pages 133-49 in Horst Herlemann 
(ed.), Quality of Life in the Soviet Union. Boulder, Colorado: West- 
view Press, 1987. 

Tomiak, J.J. (ed.). Western Perspectives on Soviet Education in the 1980s. 
New York: St. Martin's Press, 1986. 



922 



Bibliography 



"Tragediia, kotoroi moglo ne byt'," Nedelia [Moscow], No. 27, 
July 4-10, 1988, 18. 

Trehub, Aaron. * 'Children in the Soviet Union," Radio Free Eu- 
rope/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulletin [Munich], De- 
cember 15, 1987, 1-7. 

"First Fee-for-Service Hospital in USSR to Open in 

Moscow," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty 
Research Bulletin [Munich], September 14, 1987, 1-3. 

"More Glasnost' on Soviet Health Issues," Radio Free 

Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulletin [Munich], 
October 12, 1987, 1-4. 

"New Figures on Infant Mortality in the USSR, ' ' Radio 

Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulletin [Mu- 
nich], October 29, 1987, 1-3. 

"Poverty in the Soviet Union," Radio Free Europe/Radio 

Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulletin [Munich], June 20, 1988, 
1-7. 

"Quality of Soviet Health Care under Attack," Radio 

Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulletin [Mu- 
nich], July 28, 1986, 1-7. 

Treml, Vladimir. "Alcohol Abuse and the Quality of Life in the 
Soviet Union." Pages 151-61 in Horst Herlemann (ed.), Qual- 
ity of Life in the Soviet Union. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 
1987. 

"Tsifry i fakty," Pravda [Moscow], October 3, 1987, 3. 

"Tsifry vmesto bol'nykh," Pravda [Moscow], September 2, 1987, 3. 

"Uchebniki novogo pokolenia: Kogda oni budut?," Pravda 
[Moscow], September 26, 1987, 3. 

"Vnimanie: Deti v bede!" Nedelia [Moscow], No. 26, June 27- 
July 3, 1988, 12. 

Voronitsyn, Sergei. "The Less Well-off Sector and the Pending 
Price Reform," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty 
Research Bulletin [Munich], September 24, 1987, 1-5. 

"Restructuring of Higher Education: Plans and Con- 
tradictions," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty 
Research Bulletin [Munich], April 15, 1987, 1-4. 

. "Why Has the Ail-Union Congress of Teachers Been Post- 
poned?" Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research 
Bulletin [Munich], July 7, 1987, 1-4. 

"V put', uchebnyi god. Segodnia — Den' znanii," Pravda [Moscow], 
September 1, 1987, 1. 

"Vysokaia tsena besplatnogo lecheniia," Literaturnaia gazeta [Mos- 
cow], September 16, 1987, 2. 



923 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



"Vzroslye igry: Razmyshleniia po povodu vyborov direktora 
shkoly," Ekonomicheskaia gazeta [Moscow], No. 6, February 1988, 
13. 

Weaver, Kitty D. Russia's Future: The Communist Education of Soviet 

Youth. New York: Praeger, 1981. 
Winter, Sonia. "An Interview with Vladimir Trend on Alcoholism 

in the USSR," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty 

Research Bulletin [Munich], August 3, 1987, 1-6. 
"Zabota o mnogodetnykh sem'iakh," Pravda [Moscow], October 9, 

1987, 2. 



Chapter 7 

Armstrong, John A. Ideology, Politics, and Government in the Soviet 

Union. New York: Praeger, 1978. 
Barghoorn, Frederick C, and Thomas F. Remington. Politics in 

the USSR. (3d ed.) Boston: Little, Brown, 1987. 
Bialer, Seweryn. The Soviet Paradox: External Expansion, Internal 

Decline. New York: Vintage Books, 1986. 
Stalin } s Successors: Leadership, Stability, and Change in the Soviet 

Union. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980. 
Bialer, Seweryn (ed.). Inside Gorbachev's Russia. Boulder, Colorado: 

Westview Press, 1989. 
Bialer, Seweryn, and Thane Gustafson (eds.). Russia at the Cross- 
roads. London: Allen and Unwin, 1982. 
Breslauer, George. Khrushchev and Brezhnev as Leaders: Building Author- 
ity in Soviet Politics. London: Allen and Unwin, 1982. 
"Power and Authority in Soviet Politics." Pages 15-33 

in Joseph L. Nogee (ed.), Soviet Politics: Russia after Brezhnev. New 

York: Praeger, 1985. 
"Provincial Party Leaders Demand Articulation and the 

Nature of Center-Periphery Relations in the USSR," Slavic 

Review, 45, No. 4, Winter 1986, 650-72. 
Brown, Archie, and Michael Kaser (eds.). Soviet Policy for the 1980s. 

Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982. 
Burant, Stephen R. "The Influence of Russian Tradition on the 

Political Style of the Soviet Elite," Political Science Quarterly, 102, 

No. 2, Summer 1987, 273-93. 
"Soviet Political Culture." (Paper presented at Midwest 

Slavic Conference, University of Wisconsin, April 18-19, 1986.) 

Madison: 1986. 

D'Agostino, Anthony. Soviet Succession Struggles. Winchester, Mas- 
sachusetts: Allen and Unwin, 1987. 



924 



Bibliography 



"Departments 'May Be Halved'," Moscow World Service 
[Moscow], September 29, 1988. Foreign Broadcast Information 
Service, Daily Report: Soviet Union. (FBIS-SOV-88-190.) Sep- 
tember 30, 1988, 33. 

Deputaty verkhovnogo soveta SSSR. Moscow: Izvestiia, 1984. 

Fainsod, Merle. How Russia Is Ruled. Cambridge: Harvard Univer- 
sity Press, 1965. 

Feher, Ferenc, and Andrew Arato (eds.). Gorbachev: The Debate. At- 
lantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press International, 
1989. 

Gosudarstvennyi komitet po statistike. Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR v 

1985 g. Moscow: Finansy i statistika, 1986. 
Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR za 70 let. Moscow: Finansy i 

statistika, 1987. 

Hahn, Jeffrey W. Soviet Grassroots: Citizen Participation in Local Soviet 
Government. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987. 

Hahn, Werner. "Electoral 'Choice' in the Soviet Bloc," Problems 
of Communism, 36, No. 2, March-April 1987, 29-39. 

Harasymiw, Bohdan. Political Elite Recruitment in the Soviet Union. 
New York: St. Martin's Press, 1984. 

Hazard, John N. The Soviet System of Government. (5th ed.) Chicago: 
University of Chicago Press, 1980. 

HeUer, Mikhail. Cogs in the Wheel. New York: Knopf, 1988. 

Hill, Ronald J., and Peter Frank. The Soviet Communist Party. Lon- 
don: Allen and Unwin, 1983. 

Holmes, Leslie. Politics in the Communist World. Oxford: Claren- 
don Press, 1986. 

Hough, Jerry F. "Changes in Soviet Elite Composition." Pages 39- 
64 in Seweryn Bialer and Thane Gustafson (eds.), Russia at the 
Crossroads. London: Allen and Unwin, 1982. 

Russia and the West: Gorbachev and the Politics of Reform. New 

York: Simon and Schuster, 1988. 

The Soviet Union and Social Science Theory. Cambridge: Har- 
vard University Press, 1977. 

Jozsza, Gyula. "Bureaucracy in Party and State." Pages 312-23 
in Hans-Joachim Veen (ed.), From Brezhnev to Gorbachev. New 
York: BERG, 1987. 

. "Political Seilschaften in the USSR." Pages 139-73 in 

T.H. Rigby and Bohdan Harasymiw (eds.), Leadership Selection 
and Patron-Client Relations in the USSR and Yugoslavia. London: 
Allen and Unwin, 1983. 

Konstitutsiia SSSR i razvitie sovetskogo zakonodateVstva. Moscow: 
Iuridicheskaia literatura, 1981. 

KPSS i razvitie sovetskoi politicheskoi sistemy. Moscow: My si', 1987. 



925 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



"KPSS v tsifrakh," Partiinaia zhizn' [Moscow], No. 14, July 1981, 
13-26. 

"KPSS v tsifrakh," Partiinaia zhizn' [Moscow], No. 14, July 1986, 
19-32. 

"KPSS v tsifrakh," Partiinaia zhizn' [Moscow], No. 21, Novem- 
ber 1987, 6-20. 

Kratkii politicheskii slovar'. Moscow: Izdatel'stvo politicheskoi liter- 
atury, 1980. 

Laqueur, Walter. The Long Road to Freedom: Russia and Glasnost. New 
York: Scribner's, 1989. 

Lewis, Moshe. The Gorbachev Phenomenon. Berkeley: University of 
California Press, 1988. 

Linden, Carl. The Soviet Party-State: The Politics of Ideocratic Despotism. 
New York: Praeger, 1983. 

Mandel, Ernst. Beyond Perestroika: The Future of Gorbachev's USSR. 
London: Verso, 1989. 

Mann, Dawn. "The Party Conference Resolution on Democrati- 
zation and Political Reform," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 
Radio Free Liberty Research Bulletin [Munich], July 6, 1988, 1-8. 

Medish, Vadim. The Soviet Union. (3d ed.) Englewood Cliffs, New 
Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1987. 

"Medvedev Answers Journalists Questions," Moscow TASS 
[Moscow], September 30, 1988. Foreign Broadcast Information 
Service, Daily Report: Soviet Union. (FBIS-SOV-88-191 .) Oc- 
tober 3, 1988, 42. 

Meissner, Boris. "Social Change in the Soviet Union and Social 
Structure of the CPSU." Pages 299-311 in Hans-Joachim Veen 
(ed.), From Brezhnev to Gorbachev. New York: BERG, 1987. 

Meyer, Alfred G. Leninism. New York: Praeger, 1963. 

Michnik, Adam. Letters from Prison and Other Essays. Berkeley: 
University of California Press, 1985. 

Miller, John H. "The Communist Party: Trends and Problems." 
Pages 1-34 in Archie Brown and Michael Kaser (eds.), Soviet 
Policy for the 1980s. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982. 

Moore, Barrington, Jr. Soviet Politics: The Dilemma of Power. New 
York: Harper and Row, 1965. 

Moses, Joel C. "Functional Career Specialization in Soviet Regional 
Elite Recruitment." Pages 15-63 in T.H. Rigby and Bohdan 
Harasymiw (eds.), Leadership Selection and Patron- Client Relations in 
the USSR and Yugoslavia. London: Allen and Unwin, 1983. 

Nogee, Joseph L. (ed.). Soviet Politics: Russia after Brezhnev. New 
York: Praeger, 1985. 

Nor-Mesek, Nikolaij, and Wolfgang Rieper. Politburo: Leading 
Organs of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet 



926 



Bibliography 



Union and Leading Organs of the Republics. Frankfurt: Institut 
fur Sowjet-Studien, 1987. 

"O demokratizatsii sovetskogo obshchestva i reforme politicheskoi 
sistemy," Pravda [Moscow], July 5, 1988, 2. 

Rahr, Alexander. 4 'Gorbachev's Personal Staff," Radio Free Eu- 
rope/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulletin [Munich], 
May 30, 1988, 1-5. 

. "Restructuring the Kremlin Leadership," Radio Free Eu- 
rope/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulletin [Munich], Oc- 
tober 4, 1988, 1-6. 

"Turnover in the Central Party Apparatus," Radio Free 

Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulletin [Munich], 
July 9, 1987, 1-10. 

. "Turnover in the Soviet nomenklatura?," Radio Free Eu- 
rope/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulletin [Munich], 
June 5, 1988, 1-4. 

' 'Who Is in Charge of the Party Apparatus? , ' ' Radio Free 

Europe/Radio Liberty, Report on the USSR [Munich], 1, No. 15, 
April 14, 1989, 19-24. 

Remington, Thomas F. The Truth of Authority. Pittsburgh: Univer- 
sity of Pittsburgh Press, 1988. 

Rigby, T.H., and Bohdan Harasymiw (eds.). Leadership Selection 
and Patron-Client Relations in the USSR and Yugoslavia. London: 
Allen and Unwin, 1983. 

Ross, Cameron. Local Government in the Soviet Union. London: Croom 
Helm, 1987. 

Smith, Gordon B. Soviet Politics: Continuity and Contradiction. New 
York: St. Martin's Press, 1988. 

Tatu, Michel. Gorbatchev: I'URSS va-t-elle changer? Paris: Le Cen- 
turion, 1987. 

"19th Party Conference," Problems of Communism, 37, 

Nos. 3-4, May-August 1988, 1-15. 

Teague, Elizabeth. "Central Committee Resolution Fudges Issue 
of Party Elections," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio 
Liberty Research Bulletin [Munich], January 29, 1987, 1-3. 

"Conference Preparations Run into Trouble," Radio Free 

Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulletin [Munich], 
May 7, 1988, 1-6. 

"Fall in Representation of Party Apparatus in CPSU Cen- 
tral Committee," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Report on 
the USSR [Munich], May 12, 1989, 3-5. 

"Text of the Resolution 'On Reorganisation and The Party's Per- 
sonnel Policy' Adopted by the Plenary Meeting of the CPSU 
Central Committee," Soviet Review, 24, No. 5, February 5, 1987, 
65-81. 



927 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Tumarkin, Nina. Lenin Lives Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 
1983. 

United States. Central Intelligence Agency. CPSU Central Commit- 
tee and Central Auditing Commission: Members Elected at the 27th Party 
Congress. (LDA 86-10123.) Washington: 1986. 

Ustav Kommunisticheskoi Partii Sovetskogo Soiuza. Moscow: Politizdat, 
1986. 

Veen, Hans-Joachim (ed.). From Brezhnev to Gorbachev. New York: 
BERG, 1987. 

Voslensky, Michael. Nomenklatura. Garden City, New York: 
Doubleday, 1984. 

White, Stephen, and Alex Pravda (eds.). Ideology and Soviet Politics. 
New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988. 

Willerton, John P. , Jr. "Patronage Networks and Coalition Build- 
ing in the Brezhnev Era," Soviet Studies, 39, No. 2, April 1987, 
175-204. 

Yanov, Alexander. The Drama of the Soviet 1960s. Berkeley: Univer- 
sity of California, Institute of International Studies, 1984. 

Zemtsov, Ilya, and John Farrar. Gorbachev: The Man and the Sys- 
tem. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Books, 1988. 



Chapter 8 

Bahry, Donna. Outside Moscow: Power, Politics, and Budgetary Policy 
in the Soviet Republics. New York: Columbia University Press, 
1987. 

Friedgut, Theodore. Political Participation in the USSR. Princeton: 
Princeton University Press, 1979. 

"Gorbachev Chairs Councils of Elders," Moscow TASS Interna- 
tional Service [Moscow] , June 3, 1989. Foreign Broadcast Infor- 
mation Service, Daily Report: Soviet Union. (FBIS-SOV-89-106-S.) 
June 5, 1989, 45. 

Hammer, Darrell P. The USSR: The Politics of Oligarchy. Boulder, 
Colorado: Westview Press, 1986. 

Hough, Jerry F. "Gorbachev Consolidating Power," Problems of 
Communism, 36, No. 4, July- August 1987, 21-43. 

The Soviet Prefects. Durham: Duke University Press, 1969. 

Hough, Jerry F., and Merle Fainsod. How the Soviet Union Is 
Governed. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979. 

Jacobs, Everett M. (ed.). Soviet Local Government and Politics. Lon- 
don: Allen and Unwin, 1983. 

Khrushchev, Nikita S. Khrushchev Remembers. (Ed. and trans., Strobe 
Talbott.) Boston: Little, Brown, 1970. 



928 



Bibliography 



Konstitutsiia SSSR i razvitie sovetskogo zakonodateVstva. Moscow: 

Iuridicheskaia literatura, 1981. 
Laird, Roy D., and Betty A. Laird. A Soviet Lexicon. Lexington, 

Massachusetts: Heath, 1988. 
Medish, Vadim. The Soviet Union. (3d ed.) Englewood Cliffs, New 

Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1987. 
Pavlovskii, R. Sovetskoe administrativnoe pravo. Kiev: Vyshcha shkola, 

1986. 

Potichnyj, Peter J., and Jane Shapiro Zacek (eds.). Politics and Par- 
ticipation under Communist Rule. New York: Praeger, 1983. 

Proskurin, Alexander. Fraternal Alliance. Moscow: Novosti, 1986. 

- 'Report of the Congress of USSR People's Deputies Credentials 
Commission, Delivered by Deputy Z.V. Gidaspov at May 25 
Evening Session of the Congress of USSR People's Deputies," 
Pravda [Moscow], May 26, 1989, 2, 4. 

Rodionov, R.A. Kollektivnost' — vysshii printsip partiinogo rukovodst- 
va. Moscow: Politizdat, 1967. 

Shchetinin, B.V., and A.N. Gorshenev. Kurs sovetskogo gosudarst- 
vennogo prava. Moscow: Vyshaia shkola, 1971. 

Shevchenko, Arkady. Breaking with Moscow. New York: Knopf, 
1985. 

Shtromas, Alex. "The Legal Position of Nationalities in the 1977 
Constitution," Russian Review, No. 37, 1978, 265-72. 

Siegler, R.W. The Standing Committees of the Supreme Soviet. New York: 
Praeger, 1982. 

' * Soobshchenie ob itogakh vyborov v mestnykh sovetakh narod- 
nykh deputatov," Pravda [Moscow], June 27, 1978, 4. 

Stalin, Joseph. Problems of Leninism. (11th ed.) Moscow: Foreign 
Languages, 1953. 

Tolkunov, Lev. How the Supreme Soviet Functions. Moscow: Novosti, 
1987. 

Toporin, Boris. The New Constitution of the USSR. Moscow: Progress, 
1980. 

Towster, Julian. Political Power in the USSR, 1917-1947. Oxford: 
Oxford University Press, 1948. 

United States. Central Intelligence Agency. Deputaty Verkhovnogo 
Soveta. Washington: 1984. 

Central Intelligence Agency. Directorate of Intelligence. 

Directory of Soviet Officials: National Organizations. Washington: 1987. 

Central Intelligence Agency. Directorate of Intelligence. 

Directory of Soviet Officials: Republic Organizations Update. Washing- 
ton: 1987. 

. Department of State. "The Soviet Constitution: Myth and 

Reality," Department of State Bulletin. Washington: 1987. 



929 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



"USSR SS Resolution 'On the Organization of Work to Fulfill 
the Instructions Given to the USSR SS by the Congress of USSR 
People's Deputies'," Pravda [Moscow], July 27, 1989, 1. 

Vanneman, P. The Supreme Soviet: Politics and Legislative Process. 
Durham: Duke University Press, 1977. 

Verkhovnyi Sovet SSSR, odinnadtsatogo sozyva. Moscow: Politizdat, 1984. 

Yurkin, G. "Letter to the Editor and Response," Argumenty ifakty 
[Moscow], No. 1, January 6-12, 1989, 2. 



Chapter 9 

Barghoorn, Frederick C., and Thomas F. Remington. Politics in 
the USSR. (3d ed.) Boston: Little, Brown, 1986. 

Barringer, Felicity. "Pasternak House to Be a Museum," New York 
Times, May 17, 1988, 8. 

Christie, Ian. "The Cinema." Pages 284-92 in James Cracraft 
(ed.), The Soviet Union Today: An Interpretive Guide. Chicago: 
University of Chicago Press, 1988. 

Cracraft, James (ed.). 77ie Soviet Today: An Interpretive Guide. Chicago: 
University of Chicago Press, 1988. 

Curry, Jane Leftwich, and Joan R. Dassin. Press Control Around the 
World. New York: Praeger, 1982. 

Dizard, Wilson P., and Blake S. Swensrud. Gorbachev's Information 
Revolution: Controlling Glasnost in a New Electronic Era. Washing- 
ton: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1987. 

Dunham, Vera S. In Stalin's Time: Middle-Class Values in Soviet Fic- 
tion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976. 

Dunlop, John B. "Soviet Cultural Politics," Problems of Communism, 
36, No. 6, November-December 1987, 34-56. 

"Soviet Film under Gorbachev, ' ' Kennan Institute for Ad- 
vanced Russian Studies, Meeting Report, May 6, 1987. 

Dzirkals, Lilita, Thane Gustafson, and A. Ross Johnson. "The 
Media and Intra-Elite Communication in the USSR," Rand 
Report, No. R-2869, September 1982, 1-61. 

Ebon, Martin. The Soviet Propaganda Machine. New York: McGraw- 
Hill, 1987. 

Fein, Esther B. "Impressario Is Back in Moscow, for Now," New 
York Times, May 10, 1988, Al, A3. 

Friedberg, Maurice. Russian Culture in the 1980s. (Significant Is- 
sues Series.) Washington: Center for Strategic and International 
Studies, 1985. 

Glazov, Yuri. The Russian Mind since Stalin 's Death. Boston: Reidel, 
1985. 



930 



Bibliography 



Golovskoy, Valery S. "Is There Censorship in the Soviet Union?," 
Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies, Meeting Report, 

1986, 1-16. 

Golovskoy, Valery S., and John Rimberg. Behind the Soviet Screen: 
The Motion-Picture Industry in the USSR, 1972-1982. Ann Arbor: 
Ardis, 1986. 

Goscilo, Helena. "Tatiana Tolstaia's 'Dome of Many-Colored 
Glass': The World Refracted Through Multiple Perspectives," 
Slavic Review, 47, No. 2, Summer 1988, 280-90. 

Hosking, Geoffrey A. "The Politics of Literature. " Pages 272-83 
in James Cracraft (ed.), The Soviet Union Today: An Interpretive 
Guide. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. 

Howe, Irving. "At the Mercy of Apparatchiks," New York Times 
Book Review, May 22, 1988. 

Jacobs, George, and Associates. "The Rapid Expansion in Soviet 
Satellite TV Broadcasting, ' ' United States Information Agency Con- 
tract Report, No. R-6-85, February 1985, 1-28. 

Judy, Richard W., and Jane M. Lommel. "The New Computer 
Literacy Campaign," Educational Communication and Technology: 
A Journal of Theory, 34, No. 2, Summer 1986, 108-23. 

Keller, Bill. "Lenin Faulted on State Terror, and a Soviet Taboo 
Is Broken," New York Times, June 8, 1988, Al, A12. 

Lee, Andrea. Russian Journal. New York: Random House, 1981. 

Lee, Gary. "Our Only Rule: Live Outside Society — Leningrad 
Emerging as Center of Youth Protest Movement," Washington 
Post, May 16, 1988, Al. 

McGulgan, Cathleen. "Art in from the Cold," Newsweek, May 23, 
1988, 16-17. 

Medish, Vadim. The Soviet Union. (3d ed.) Englewood Cliffs, New 

Jersey: Prentice- Hall, 1987. 
Medvedev, Roy. "Liquidating Stalin: Behind Gorbachev's Speech 

Was a Surge of Popular Outrage," Washington Post, November 2, 

1987, C5. 

Mickiewicz, Ellen. "The Mass Media." Pages 293-300 in James 
Cracraft (ed.), The Soviet Union Today: An Interpretive Guide. Chi- 
cago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. 

. Media and the Russian Public. New York: Praeger, 1981. 

. "Political Communication and the Soviet Media Sys- 
tem. ' ' Pages 34-65 in Joseph L. Nogee (ed.), Soviet Politics: Russia 
after Brezhnev. New York: Praeger, 1985. 

Nogee, Joseph L. (ed.). Soviet Politics: Russia after Brezhnev. New 
York: Praeger, 1985. 

Petrosyan, Gavrill. Cultural Life. Moscow: Novosti Press Agency, 
1983. 



931 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Remnick, David. "Lyubimov: Return of the Exile: In Moscow, 
a Director's Hope for a New Era," Washington Post, May 11, 
1988, CI, Cll. 

. " Soviet Union Relaxing Ban on Forbidden Books," 

Washington Post, March 23, 1988, A15. 
Romanov, Andre. "The Press We Choose," Moscow News, No. 8, 

February 21, 1988, 2. 
Shlapentokh, Vladimir. Soviet Public Opinion and Ideology: Mythology 

and Pragmatism in Interaction. New York: Praeger, 1986. 
Starr, S. Frederick. Red and Hot: The Fate of Jazz in the Soviet Union, 

1917-1980. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. 
Swed, Mark. "Schnittke: At the Summit of Soviet Music," Wall 

Street Journal, June 7, 1988, 24. 
Szamuely, Tibor. The Russian Tradition. New York: McGraw-Hill, 

1974. 

Walicki, Andrzej. Russian Social Thought: An Introduction to the In- 
tellectual History of Nineteenth- Century Russia. Goleta, California: 
Kimberly Press, 1977. 

Weil, Irwin. "A Survey of the Cultural Scene." Pages 261-72 in 
James Cracraft (ed.), The Soviet Union Today: A Interpretive Guide. 
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. 

White, Stephen. "Propagating Communist Values in the USSR," 
Problems of Communism, 34, No. 6, November-December 1985, 
1-17. 

Wishnevsky, Julia. "Gumilev and Nabokov Published in Soviet 
Journals," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty 
Research Bulletin [Munich], September 24, 1986, 1-5. 



Chapter 10 

Allison, Roy. Finland's Relations with the Soviet Union, 1944-1984. 

New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985. 
Aspaturian, Vernon S. Process and Power in Soviet Foreign Policy. 

Boston: Little, Brown, 1971. 
"Soviet Foreign Policy." Pages 170-245 in Roy C. 

MaCridis (ed.), Foreign Policy in World Politics. Englewood Cliffs, 

New Jersey: Prentice- Hall, 1985. 
Baxter, William P. The Soviet Way of Warfare. London: Brassey's 

Defense, 1986. 

Becker, Abraham S. "Soviet Union and the Third World: The Eco- 
nomic Dimension," Soviet Economy, 2, No. 3, July- September, 
1986, 233-60. 



932 



Bibliography 



Bialer, Seweryn. The Soviet Paradox: External Expansion, Internal 
Decline. New York: Knopf, 1986. 

Bialer, Seweryn (ed.). The Domestic Context of Soviet Foreign Policy. 
London: Croom Helm, 1981. 

Blasier, Cole. The Giant's Rival: The USSR and Latin America. Pitts- 
burgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1982. 

Buszynski, Leszek. Soviet Foreign Policy and Southeast Asia. New York: 
St. Martin's Press, 1986. 

"Soviet Foreign Policy and Southeast Asia: Prospects for 

the Gorbachev Era," Asian Survey, 26, No. 5, May 1986, 559- 
609. 

Bykov, O., V. Razmerov, and D. Tomashevsky. The Priorities of 
Soviet Foreign Policy Today. Moscow: Progress, 1981. 

Caldwell, Dan(ed.). Soviet International Behavior and U.S. Policy Op- 
tions. Lexington, Massachusetts: Heath, 1985. 

Campbell, Kurt M. Southern Africa in Soviet Foreign Policy. (Adelphi 
Papers.) London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 
1987. 

Cheng, Joseph Y.S. "Sino-Soviet Relations in the 1980s," Asia 

Pacific Community, 27, Winter 1985, 44-62. 
Chernyakov, Yu. "The Development of Diplomatic Services and 

Today's World," International Affairs [Moscow], 9, September 

1986, 106-15. 

Chirkin, V., and Yu Yudin. A Socialist Oriented State. Moscow: 
Progress, 1983. 

Clement, Peter. "Moscow and Southern Africa," Problems of Com- 
munism, 34, No. 2, March-April 1985, 29-50. 

Cline, Ray S., James Arnold Miller, and Roger E. Kanet (eds.). 
Asia in Soviet Global Strategy. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 
1987. 

Cracraft, James (ed.). The Soviet Union Today: An Interpretive Guide. 
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. 

Currie, Kenneth M., and Gregory Varhall (eds.). The Soviet Union: 
What Lies Ahead? Military-Political Affairs in the 1980s. (Studies in 
Communist Affairs Series, No. 6.) Washington: GPO for United 
States Air Force, 1985. 

Dawisha, Karen. "Gorbachev and Eastern Europe: A New Chal- 
lenge for the West," World Policy Journal, 3, Spring 1986, 277-99. 

de Carmay, Guy, and Jonathan Story. Western Europe in World Af- 
fairs. New York: Praeger, 1986. 

Dismukes, Bradford, and James M. McConnell (eds.). Soviet Naval 
Diplomacy. New York: Pergamon Press, 1979. 

Dupree, Louis. "Afghanistan under the Khalq," Problems of Com- 
munism, 28, No. 4, July-August 1979, 34-50. 



933 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



"The Soviet Union and Afghanistan in 1987," Current His- 
tory, 86, October 1987, 333-35. 

Dyker, David A. (ed.). The Soviet Union under Gorbachev: Prospects 
for Reform. London: Croom Helm, 1987. 

Edelman, Marc. "The Other Super Powers: The Soviet Union 
and Latin America, 1917-1 987," Report on the Americas, 2 1 , No . 1 , 
January-February 1987. 

Ellison, Herbert J. "Changing Sino-Soviet Relations," Problems 
of Communism, 36, No. 3, May-June 1987, 17-29. 

Ellison, Herbert J. (ed.). Soviet Policy Toward Western Europe. Seat- 
tle: University of Washington Press, 1983. 

Fedoseyev, P.N. (ed.). Disastrous Effects of Nuclear War: Socio-Economic 
Aspects. (International Peace and Disarmament Series.) Moscow: 
Nauka, 1985. 

Fitzgerald, Mary C. "Marshal Ogarkov on the Modern Theater 

Operation," Naval War College Review, 39, No. 4/Sequence 316, 

Autumn 1986, 6-25. 
Fitzmaurice, John. Security and Politics in the Nordic Area. Aldershot, 

United Kingdom: Avebury, 1987. 
Freedman, Lawrence. Atlas of Global Strategy. New York: Facts on 

File, 1985. 

Freedman, Robert O. Soviet Policy Toward the Middle East since 1970. 

(3d ed.) New York: Praeger, 1982. 
Fukuyama, Francis. "Patterns of Soviet Third World Policy," 

Problems of Communism, 36, September-October 1987, 1-13. 
Soviet Civil- Military Relations and the Power Projection Mission. 

(Project Air Force Series.) Santa Monica, California: Rand, 

1987. 

Gamson, William A., and Andre Modigliani. Untangling the Cold 

War. Boston: Little, Brown, 1971. 
Gareev, M.A. M.V. Frunze, voennii teoretik. Moscow: Voenizdat, 

1985. 

Garthoff, Raymond L. Soviet Military Policy: A Historical Analysis. 

New York: Praeger, 1966. 
"Soviet Views on the Interrelations of Diplomacy and 

Military Strategy," Political Science Quarterly, 94, No. 3, Fall 1979, 

391-405. 

Gelman, Harry. Gorbachev's Policies Toward Western Europe: A Balance 
Sheet. Santa Monica, California: Rand, October 1987. 

George, James L. (ed.). The Soviet and Other Communist Navies: The 
View from the Mid-1980s. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1986. 

Ginsburgs, George, and Alvin Z. Rubinstein (eds). Soviet Policy 
Toward Western Europe. New York: Praeger, 1978. 



934 



Bibliography 



Golan, Galia. "Gorbachev's Middle East Strategy," Foreign Affairs, 
65, No. 1, Fall 1987, 41-57. 

. "The 'Vanguard Party' Controversy," Soviet Studies , 39, 

No. 4, October 1987, 599-609. 

Gorman, Robert F. "Soviet Perspectives on the Prospects for So- 
cialist Development in Africa," African Affairs, 83, April 1984, 
163-87. 

Gorshkov, S.G. Morskaia moshch' gosudarstva. Moscow: Voenizdat, 
1979. 

Grechko, A. A. The Armed Forces of the Soviet Union. Moscow: Progress 
1977. 

Gromyko, A. A., and B.N. Ponomarev (eds.). Soviet Foreign Policy: 
Vol. 1: 1917-1945, Vol. II: 1945-80. (4th ed.) Moscow: Progress, 
1981. 

Hoffmann, Erik P., and Frederic J. Fleron, Jr. (eds.). The Conduct 
of Soviet Foreign Policy. New York: Aldine, 1980. 

Holloway, David. "Arms Control." Pages 126-34 in James 
Cracraft (ed.), The Soviet Union Today: An Interpretive Guide. Chi- 
cago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. 

Hough, Jerry F. Soviet Leadership in Transition. Washington: Brook- 
ings Institution, 1980. 

The Struggle for the Third World: Soviet Debates and American 

Options. Washington: Brookings Institution, 1985. 

Jones, Christopher D. Soviet Influence in Eastern Europe. New York: 
Praeger, 1981. 

Jones, David R. (ed.). Soviet Armed Forces Review (annuals 1977 
through 1985). Gulf Breeze, Florida: Academic International 
Press, 1977-85. 

Kanet, Roger E. (ed.). Soviet Foreign Policy in the 1980s. New York: 
Praeger, 1982. 

Kaplan, Stephen S., Michel F. Tatu, Thomas W. Robinson, et 
al. Diplomacy of Power: Soviet Armed Forces as a Political Instrument. 
Washington: Brookings Institution, 1981. 

Katz, Mark N. The Third World in Soviet Military Thought. London: 
Croom Helm, 1983. 

Kavan, Zdenek. "Gorbachev and the World: The Political Side." 
Pages 164-204 in David A. Dyker (ed.), The Soviet Union under 
Gorbachev: Prospects for Reform. London: Croom Helm, 1987. 

Kelley, Paul D. Soviet General Doctrine for War, 1. (Soviet Battlefield 
Development Plan.) Washington: United States Army Intelli- 
gence and Threat Analysis Center, 1987. 

Kitrinos, Robert W. "The CPSU Central Committee's International 
Department," Problems of Communism, 33, No. 5, September- 
October 1984, 47-65. 



935 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Klintworth, Gary. Mr. Gorbachev's China Diplomacy. (Working Paper 
No. 111.) Canberra: Australian National University, Strategic 
and Defense Studies Centre, Research School of Pacific Studies, 
October 1986. 

Korbonski, Andrzej, and Francis Fukuyama (eds.). The Soviet Union 
and the Third World: The Last Three Decades. Ithaca: Cornell Univer- 
sity Press, 1987. 

Kozlov, S.N. (ed.). The Officer's Handbook. (Trans., Translation 
Bureau, Secretary of State Department, Ottawa, Canada.) 
(Soviet Military Thought Series.) Washington: United States 
Air Force, 1977. 

Kozlov, S.N., D. Volkogonov, and S. Tyushkevich, et al. Marxism- 
Leninism on War and the Army: A Soviet View. (Trans., Progress, 
Moscow.) (Soviet Military Thought Series, 2.) Washington: 
United States Air Force, 1973. 

Krakowski, Elie. ''Afghanistan and Beyond: The Strategy of Dis- 
memberment," National Interest, 37, No. 2, Spring 1987, 28-38. 

Laird, Robbin F. (ed.). Soviet Foreign Policy. Montpelier, Vermont: 
Capital City Press for Academy of Political Science, 1987. 

Laird, Robbin F., and Erik P. Hoffmann (eds.). Soviet Foreign Policy 
in a Changing World. Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1986. 

Lederer, Ivo. J. (ed.). Russian Foreign Policy. New Haven: Yale 
University Press, 1962. 

Lee, William T., and Richard F. Staar. Soviet Military Policy since 
World War II. Stanford, California: Hoover Institution Press, 
1986. 

Leites, Nathan. Soviet Style in War. (Rand Publication Series.) Santa 

Monica, California: Rand, 1982. 
Lomov, N.A. (ed.). Scientific-Technical Progress and the Revolution in 

Military Affairs : A Soviet View. (Trans., United States Air Force.) 

(Soviet Military Thought Series.) Washington: United States 

Air Force, 1973. 
Lynch, Allen. The Soviet Study of International Relations . Cambridge: 

Cambridge University Press, 1987. 
Lyne, Roderic. "Making Waves: Mr. Gorbachev's Public Diplo- 
macy 1985-6," International Affairs [London], 63, No. 2, Spring 

1987, 205-24. 

MccGwire, Michael. Military Objectives in Soviet Foreign Policy. 
Washington: Brookings Institution, 1987. 

Macridis, Roy C. (ed.). Foreign Policy in World Politics. Englewood 
Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1985. 

Malik, M. (ed.). Soviet-American Relations with Pakistan, Iran, and Af- 
ghanistan. Basingstoke, Hampshire, United Kingdom: Macmil- 
lan, 1986. 



936 



Bibliography 



Mediansky, F.A., and Dianne Court. The Soviet Union in Southeast 
Asia. Canberra: Australian National University, Strategic and 
Defense Studies Centre, Research School of Pacific Studies, 1984. 

Meissner, Boris. "The Foreign Ministry and Foreign Service of 
the USSR," Anssenpolitik [Hamburg], English edition, 28, No. 1 , 
1977, 49-64. 

Menon, Raj an. Soviet Power and the Third World. New Haven: Yale 
University Press, 1986. 

Milovidov, A.S., and V.G. Kozlov (eds.). The Philosophical Heritage 
of V.I. Lenin and Problems of Contemporary War: A Soviet View. 
(Trans., United States Air Force.) (Soviet Military Thought Ser- 
ies.) Washington: United States Air Force, 1977. 

Moser, Charles (ed.). Combat on Communist Territory. Lake Bluff, 
Illinois: Regnery Gateway, 1985. 

Nelsen, Harvey. "Strategic Weapons and the Sino-Soviet Dispute: 
An Overview," Issues and Studies [Taipei], 21, November 1985, 
103-18. 

Odom, William E. "Soviet Force Posture: Dilemmas and Direc- 
tions," Problems of Communism, 34, No. 4, July-August 1985, 
1-14. 

Ogarkov, N.V. Istoriia uchit bditeVnosti. Moscow: Voenizdat, 1985. 

. "Strategiia voennaia," Sovetskaia Voennaia Entsiklopediia, 

7. Moscow: Voenizdat, 1979. 

Vsegda v gotovnosti k zashchite otechestva. Moscow: Voeniz- 
dat, 1982. 

Osgood, Eugenia V. "Military Strategy in the Nuclear Age." Pages 
114-25 in James Cracraft (ed.), The Soviet Union Today: An In- 
terpretive Guide. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. 

Petersen, Phillip, and John G. Hines. "The Conventional Offen- 
sive in Soviet Theater Strategy," Orbis, Fall 1983, 695-739. 

Popov, V.I., I.D. Ovsyany, and V.P. Nikhamin (eds.). A Study 
of Soviet Foreign Policy. Moscow: Progress, 1975. 

Ra'anan, Uri, and Charles M. Perry (eds.). The USSR Today and 
Tomorrow. Lexington, Massachusetts: Heath, 1987. 

Ra'anan, Uri, Francis Fukuyama, Mark Falcoff, Sam C. Sarke- 
sian, and Richard H. Shultz, Jr. Third World Marxist- Leninist Re- 
gimes: Strengths, Vulnerabilities, and U.S. Policy. Washington: 
Pergamon-Brassey, 1985. 

Radzievskii, A.I. (ed.). Dictionary of Basic Military Terms. (Trans., 
Translation Bureau, Secretary of State Department, Ottawa, 
Canada.) (Soviet Military Thought Series.) Washington: United 
States Air Force, 1976. 

Reznichenko, V.G., I.N. Vorob'ev, et al. Taktika. (Biblioteka ofit- 
sera.) Moscow: Voenizdat, 1987. 



937 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Rubinstein, Alvin Z. Soviet Foreign Policy since World War II: Im- 
perial and Global. (2d ed.) Boston: Little, Brown, 1985. 

"Soviet Policy in the Third World in Perspective," Mili- 
tary Review, 58, No. 7, July 1978, 2-8. 

Soviet Policy Toward Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan: The Dy- 
namics of Influence. New York: Praeger, 1982. 

Saivetz, Carol R., and Sylvia Woodby. Soviet-Third World Relations. 
Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1985. 

Savkin, V.E. The Basic Principles of Operational Art and Tactics. (Trans., 
United States Air Force.) (Soviet Military Thought Series.) 
Washington: United States Air Force, 1972. 

Scott, Harriet F., and William F. Scott. The Soviet Art of War: Doc- 
trine, Strategy, and Tactics. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 
1982. 

Scott, William F. Soviet Sources of Military Doctrine and Strategy. New 

York: Crane, Russak, 1975. 
Selected Readings from Military Thought, 1963-1973, 5, Pts. 1-2. 

(Comp., Joseph D. Douglas and Amoretta M. Heeber.) (Studies 

in Communist Affairs.) Washington: United States Air Force, 

1982. 

Selected Soviet Military Writings, 1970-1975: A Soviet View. (Trans., 
United States Air Force.) (Soviet Military Thought Series.) 
Washington: United States Air Force, 1976. 

Shansab, Nasir. "The Struggle for Afghanistan." Pages 106-27 
in Charles Moser (ed.), Combat on Communist Territory. Lake Bluff, 
Illinois: Regnery Gateway, 1985. 

Shenfield, Stephen. The Nuclear Predicament: Explorations in Soviet Ideol- 
ogy, 37. (Chatham House Papers, Royal Institute of International 
Affairs.) London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987. 

Sidorenko, A. A. The Offensive. (Trans., United States Air Force.) 
(Soviet Military Thought Series.) Washington: United States 
Air Force, 1973. 

Slusser, Robert. "The Role of the Foreign Ministry." Pages 197- 
239 in Ivo. J. Lederer (ed.), Russian Foreign Policy. New Haven: 
Yale University Press, 1962. 

Snyder, Jed C. "Turkey's Critical Role." Pages 45-52 in Jed C. 
Snyder (ed.), Defending the Fringe: NATO, the Mediterranean, and 
the Persian Gulf. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1987. 

Snyder, Jed C. (ed.). Defending the Fringe: NATO, the Mediterranean, 
and the Persian Gulf. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1987. 

Sokolovskiy, V.D. (ed.). Soviet Military Strategy. (Trans, and ed., 
Harriet F. Scott.) New York: Crane, Russak, 1975. 

Sovetskaia voennaia entsiklopediia. (8 vols.) Moscow: Voenizdat, 1976- 
80. 



938 



Bibliography 



"Soviet Calculus of Nuclear War," Soviet Union, Special Issue, 10, 
Pts. 2-3, 1983. 

Staar, Richard F. USSR: Foreign Policies after Detente. Stanford, 

California: Hoover Institution Press, 1985. 
Thakur, Ramesh, and Carlyle A. Thayer (eds.). The Soviet Union 

as an Asian Pacific Power. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 

1987. 

Thorn, Francoise. Moscow 's New Thinking as an Instrument of Foreign 
Policy. Toronto: Mackenzie Institute, 1987. 

Triska, Jan F. , and David D. Finley. Soviet Foreign Policy. New York: 
Macmillan, 1968. 

Ulam, Adam B. Dangerous Relations: The Soviet Union in World Poli- 
tics, 1970-1982. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. 

Expansion and Coexistence: Soviet Foreign Policy, 191 7-1973. 

(2d ed.). New York: Praeger, 1974. 

The Rivals: America and Russia since World War II. New York: 

Viking, 1971. 

. "United States-Soviet Relations: Current Trends." Pages 

121-29 in Uri Ra'anan and Charles M. Perry (eds.), The USSR 
Today and Tomorrow. Lexington, Massachusetts: Heath, 1987. 

United States. Department of Defense. Soviet Military Power: An As- 
sessment of the Threat, 1988. (7th ed.) Washington: 1988. 

Vigor, Peter H. The Soviet View of War, Peace, and Neutrality. Lon- 
don: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975. 

Voennii entsihlopedicheskii slovar'. Moscow: Voenizdat, 1983. 

Volgyes, Ivan. "Troubled Friendship or Mutual Dependence? 
Eastern Europe and the USSR in the Gorbachev Era," Orbis, 
September 1986, 343-53. 

Volkogonov, D. A. (ed.). Marksistsko-Leninskoe uchenie o voine i armii. 
(Biblioteka ofitsera.) Moscow: Voenizdat, 1984. 

von Beyme, Klaus. The Soviet Union in World Politics. New York: 
St. Martin's Press, 1987. 

Welch, William. American Images of Soviet Foreign Policy. New Haven: 
Yale University Press, 1970. 

Wettig, Gerhard. "Eastern Europe in East- West Relations," Aus- 
senpolitik [Hamburg], English edition, 37, No. 1, 1986, 3-23. 

Wilson, Edward. Russia and Black Africa Before World War II. New 
York: Holmes and Meier, 1974. 

Wolfe, Thomas W. Soviet Strategy at the Crossroads. Cambridge: Har- 
vard University Press, 1964. 

Zagoria, Donald S. (ed.). Soviet Policy in East Asia. New Haven: 
Yale University Press, 1982. 

Zamostny, Thomas J. "Moscow and the Third World: Recent 
Trends in Soviet Thinking," Soviet Studies, 36, No. 2, April 1984, 
223-35. 



939 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Zhilin, P. A. (ed.). Istoriia voennogo iskusstva. (Biblioteka ofitsera.) 
Moscow: Voenizdat, 1986. 

(Various issues of the following publications were also used in 
the preparation of this chapter: Foreign Broadcast Information Ser- 
vice, Daily Report: Soviet Union, 1985-89; Izvestiia [Moscow], 
1985-89; and Pravda [Moscow], 1985-89.) 



Chapter 11 

Becker, Abraham S. Sitting on Bayonets: The Soviet Defense Burden and 
the Slowdown of Soviet Defense Spending. Santa Monica, California: 
Rand, 1985. 

. Soviet Central Decisionmaking and Economic Growth: A Sum- 
ming Up. (Project Air Force, No. R-3349-AF.) Santa Monica, 
California: Rand, 1986. 
Bergson, Abram. The Economics of Soviet Planning. Westport, Con- 
necticut: Greenwood Press, 1980. 
Bergson, Abram, and Herbert S. Levine (eds.). The Soviet Econ- 
omy: Toward the Year 2000. London: Allen and Unwin, 1983. 
Birman, Igor. "The Imbalance of the Soviet Economy," Soviet 

Studies [Glasgow], 60, No. 2, April 1988, 210-21. 
. "The Soviet Economy: Alternative Views," Atlantic Com- 
munity Quarterly, 24, No. 4, Winter 1986-87, 345-55. 
Bohlen, Celestine. "Soviet Party Leadership Endorses Sweep- 
ing Economic Restructuring," Washington Post, June 27, 1987, 
A24. 

Bornstein, Morris. "Soviet Price Policies," Soviet Economy, 3, No. 2, 

April-June 1987, 96-134. 
Bornstein, Morris (ed.). The Soviet Economy: Continuity and Change. 

Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1981. 
Brown, Archie. "Gorbachev: New Man in the Kremlin," Problems 

of Communism, 34, No. 3, May-June 1985, 1-12. 
Buck, Trevor, and John Cole. Modern Soviet Economic Performance. 

Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987. 
Campbell, Robert Wellington. Soviet Economic Power. Boston: 

Houghton Mifflin, 1974. 
Clarke, Roger A., and DubravkoJ.I. Matko. Soviet Economic Facts, 

1917-1981. (2d ed.) New York: St. Martin's Press, 1983. 
Countries of the World and Their Leaders: Yearbook, 1986. Detroit: Gale 

Research, 1986. 



940 



Bibliography 



Country Profile USSR, 1987-88. London: Economist Intelligence 
Unit, 1988. 

Crane, Keith. The Soviet Economic Dilemma of Eastern Europe. (Project 
Air Force, No. R-3368-AF.) Santa Monica, California: Rand, 
1986. 

Dobb, Maurice. Soviet Economic Development since 1917. (Rev. ed.) 
New York: International, 1966. 

Dyker, David A. (ed.). The Soviet Union under Gorbachev. Becken- 
ham, Kent, United Kingdom: Croom Helm, 1987. 

Elek, Peter S. "Soviet Capital Strategy and Performance During 
the Eleventh Five-Year Plan: Past, Present, and Prospective." 
Pages 139-69 in Philip Joseph (ed.), The Soviet Economy after Brezh- 
nev. Brussels: North Atlantic Treaty Organization, 1984. 

Europa Year Book, 1987, 2. London: Europa, 1987. 

Fewtrell, David. The Soviet Economic Crisis: Prospects for the Military 
and the Consumer. (Adelphi Papers, No. 186.) London: Interna- 
tional Institute for Strategic Studies, 1983. 

Freidzon, Sergei. Top-Level Administration of the Soviet Economy: A 
Partial View. (Rand Paper Series, No. P-7178.) Santa Monica, 
California: Rand, 1986. 

Galuszka, Peter, and Bill Javetski. "Reforming the Soviet Econ- 
omy," Business Week, No. 3029, December 7, 1987, 76-80, 84, 
88. 

Gorbachev, Mikhail. Restructuring: A Vital Concern of the People. 

(Speech at 18th Congress of the Trade Unions of the USSR, 

February 25, 1987.) Moscow: Novosti Press Agency, 1987. 
Gregory, Paul R., and Robert C. Stuart. Soviet Economic Structure 

and Performance. (3d ed.) New York: Harper and Row, 1986. 
Guidelines for the Economic and Social Development of the USSR for 

1986-1990 and the Period to the Year 2000. Moscow: Novosti Press 

Agency, 1986. 

Gustafson, Thane. The Soviet Economy in the 1980s. (Rand Paper 
Series, No. P6755.) Santa Monica, California: Rand, 1982. 

Gustafson, Thane, and Dawn Mann. "Gorbachev's First Year: 
Building Power and Authority," Problems of Communism, 35, 
No. 3, May-June 1986, 1-19. 

Hanson, Philip. "The Soviet Economy after Seventy Years," Radio 
Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulletin [Mu- 
nich], October 19, 1987, 1-7. 

Hewett, Ed A. Reforming the Soviet Economy: Equality Versus Effici- 
ency. Washington: Brookings Institution, 1988. 

Hofheinz, Paul. "Gorbachev's Double Burden: Economic Reform 
and Growth Acceleration," Millennium, 16, No. 1, Spring 1987, 
21-53. 



941 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Hough, Jerry F. Opening Up the Soviet Economy. Washington: Brook- 
ings Institution, 1988. 

Hutchings, Raymond. The Soviet Budget. Albany: State University 
of New York Press, 1983. 

. Soviet Economic Development. (2d ed.) New York: New York 

University Press, 1982. 

Joseph, Philip (ed.). The Soviet Economy after Brezhnev. Brussels: North 
Atlantic Treaty Organization, 1984. 

Kennan, George F. "The Gorbachev Prospect," New York Review 
of Books, 34, Nos. 21-22, January 21, 1988, 3, 6-7. 

Lee, Gary. "Gorbachev's Reforms Become Law," Washington Post, 
July 1, 1987, Al, A27. 

"Reforms Entering Crucial Phase," Washington Post, 

May 22, 1988, Al, A34. 

"Three Gorbachev Backers Put on Politburo," Washing- 
ton Post, June 27, 1987, Al, A24. 

Levine, Herbert S. "Gorbachev's Economic Reform: A Soviet 
Economy Roundtable," Soviet Economy, 3, No. 1 , January-March 
1987, 40-53. 

Linden, Carl A. Khrushchev and the Soviet Leadership, 1957-1964. Balti- 
more: Johns Hopkins Press, 1966. 

Linz, Susan J. "Managerial Autonomy in Soviet Firms," Soviet 
Studies [Glasgow], 40, No. 2, April 1988, 175-95. 

McCauley, Martin. "The Soviet Union Seventy Years after the 
Revolution," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty 
Research Bulletin [Munich], October 21, 1987, 1-5. 

McNeill, Terry. "Gorbachev's First Three Years in Power," Radio 
Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulletin [Mu- 
nich], February 29, 1988, 1-8. 

"The USSR and Communism: The Twilight Years," 

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulle- 
tin [Munich], October 29, 1987, 1-5. 

Medish, Vadim. The Soviet Union. (3d ed.) Englewood Cliffs, New 
Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1987. 

Miller, Robert F. "Will the Next Seventy Years Be 'Even Bet- 
ter'?" Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research 
Bulletin [Munich], October 30, 1987, 1-5. 

Moore, Barrington, Jr. Authority and Inequality under Capitalism and 
Socialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. 

Nove, Alec. An Economic History of the U.S.S.R. New York: Pen- 
guin Press, 1969. 

Remnick, David. "Gorbachev Goals Seem Far from Fruition," 
Washington Post, December 3, 1987, A26. 



942 



Bibliography 



Roucek, Tibor. 4 'Private Enterprise in Soviet Political Debates," 
Soviet Studies [Glasgow], 40, No. 1, January 1988, 46-63. 

Rumer, Boris. "Realities of Gorbachev's Economic Program," 
Problems of Communism, 35, No. 3, May-June 1986, 20-31. 

Scherer, John L. (ed.). USSR Facts and Figures Annual. Gulf Breeze, 
Florida: Academic International Press, 1986. 

Schoepflin, George (ed.). The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. (Hand- 
books to the Modern World.) New York: Facts on File, 1986. 

Schroeder, Gertrude E. "Anatomy of Gorbachev's Economic Re- 
form," Soviet Economy, 3, No. 3, July- September 1987, 219-41. 

Scott, William F. "Moscow's Military-Industrial Complex," Air 
Force Magazine, 70, No. 3, March 1987, 47-51. 

Scrivener, Ronald. USSR Economic Handbook. London: Euromon- 
itor, 1986. 

Sestanovich, Stephen. "Gorbachev's Secret Foe: The Workers," 

Washington Post, November 1, 1987, CI, C2. 
Sherman, Howard J. The Soviet Economy. Boston: Little, Brown, 

1969. 

Shoup, Paul. The East European and Soviet Data Handbook: Political, 
Social, and Developmental Indicators, 1945-1975. Stanford, Califor- 
nia: Hoover Institution Press, 1981. 

Slider, Darrell. "The Brigade System in Soviet Industry: An Ef- 
fort to Restructure the Labour Force," Soviet Studies [Glasgow], 
39, No. 3, July 1987, 388-405. 

Tatu, Michel. "Seventy Years after the Revolution: What Next?," 
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulle- 
tin [Munich], October 26, 1987, 1-5. 

Teague, Elizabeth. "Gorbachev Tells Plenum Soviet Economy Has 
Stopped Growing," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio 
Liberty Research Bulletin [Munich], February 22, 1988, 1-4. 

Thompson, John M. Russia and the Soviet Union: An Historical Intro- 
duction. New York: Scribner's, 1986. 

United States. Central Intelligence Agency and Defense Intelli- 
gence Agency. "The Soviet Economy Stumbles Badly in 1989." 
(Report presented to United States Congress, 102d, 1st Session, 
Joint Economic Committee, Subcommittee on Technology and 
National Security.) Washington: April 20, 1990. 

Congress. 97th, 2d Session. Joint Economic Committee. 

Soviet Economy in the 1980's: Problems and Prospects. Washington: 
GPO, 1983. 

. Congress. 100th, 1st Session. Joint Economic Commit- 
tee. Gorbachev's Economic Plans. (2 vols.) Washington: GPO, 1987. 

Weickhardt, George G. "The Soviet Military-Industrial Complex 
and Economic Reform," Soviet Economy, 2, No. 3, 1986, 193-220. 



943 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Zaleski, Eugene. Stalinist Planning for Economic Growth, 1933-1952. 
(Trans., Marie-Christine MacAndrew and John H. Moore.) 
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980. 

(Various issues of the following publications were also used in 
the preparation of this chapter: Joint Publications Research Ser- 
vice, USSR Report: National Economy and Soviet Union: Economic Af- 
fairs, 1983-87.) 



Chapter 12 

Babak, Ye. "Robot trebuet rabotu," Ekonomicheskaia gazeta [Mos- 
cow], No. 44, November 1987, 12. 

Bairam, Erkin. Technical Progress and Industrial Growth in the USSR 
and Eastern Europe. Alder shot, United Kingdom: Avebury, 1988. 

Bergson, A.S. Technical Progress and Soviet Economic Development. New 
York: Basil Blackwell, 1986. 

Berliner, Joseph S. Soviet Industry from Stalin to Gorbachev. Ithaca: 
Cornell University Press, 1988. 

Brucan, Silviu. World Socialism at the Crossroads: An Insider's View. 
New York: Praeger, 1987. 

Cochrane, Nancy. "The Classification of the Branch and Minister- 
ial System of the Machine Building and Metal Working Branch 
of Soviet Industry." (Library of Congress, Federal Research Di- 
vision, Research Report.) Washington: July 1985. 

Cole, J. P. Geography of the Soviet Union. Cambridge: Cambridge 
University Press, 1984. 

Cook, Linda J. "Gorbachev's Reforms, Workers, and Welfare: 
The Threat to Employment Security and Its Political Implica- 
tions." (Paper presented at American Association for the Ad- 
vancement of Slavic Studies Meeting, Boston, November 5-8, 
1987.) Boston: 1987. 

Dellenbrant, Jan Ake. The Soviet Regional Dilemma: Planning, Peo- 
ple, and Natural Resources. Armonk, New York: Sharpe, 1986. 

Dienes, Leslie. "The Soviet Oil Industry in the Twelfth Five- Year 
Plan," Soviet Geography, 28, No. 11, November 1987, 617-55. 

Fadeev, V.T. "Effektivnost' gazotransportnoi sistemy: Sovremen- 
naia taktika tekhnicheskogo obnovleniia," Gazovaia promyshlen- 
nosV [Moscow], 11, November 1987, 28. 

Freris, Andrew. The Soviet Industrial Enterprise. London: Croom 
Helm, 1984. 

Goldman, Marshall I. Gorbachev's Challenge: Economic Reform in the 
Age of High Technology. New York: Norton, 1987. 



944 



Bibliography 



Gosudarstvennyi komitet po statistike. Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR za 

70 let. Moscow: Finansy i statistika, 1987. 
Kelly, William J., Hugh L. Shaffer, and J. Kenneth Thompson. 

Energy Research and Development in the USSR: Preparations for the 

Twenty-First Century. Durham: Duke University Press, 1986. 
Khrushchev, A.T. Geografiia promyshlennosti SSSR. Moscow: MysP, 

1986. 

Kirichenko, Vadim Nikitovich (ed.). Uskoreniie sotsiaVno- 
ekonomicheskogo razvitiia i perspektivnoie planirovaniie. Moscow: Eko- 
nomika, 1987. 

Koropeckyj, I.S., and Gertrude E. Schroeder. Economics of Soviet 
Regions. New York: Praeger, 1981. 

Kostakov, Vladimir G. "Labor Problems in Light of Perestroika," 
Soviet Economy, 4, No. 1 , January-March 1988, 95-101. 

Kuleshov, M.V. "How the Branches Should Produce Consumer 
Goods," Ekonomika i organizatsiia promyshlennogo proizvodstva 
[Novosibirsk], No. 2, February 1987. Joint Publications Research 
Service, USSR Report: National Economy. (JPRS-UEA-87-003L.) 
May 19, 1987, 39-47. 

Kuromiya, Hiroaki. Stalin's Industrial Revolution. Cambridge: Cam- 
bridge University Press, 1988. 

Liubomirov, P.G. Ocherk po istorii russkoi promyshlennosti XVII, XVIII 
i nachalo XIX veka. Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo 
politicheskoi literatury, 1947. 

Matosich, Andrew J. "Machine Building: Perestroika's Sputter- 
ing Engine," Soviet Economy, 4, No. 2, April-June 1988, 144-78. 

Medish, Vadim. The Soviet Union. (3d ed.) Englewood Cliffs, New 
Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1987. 

"Ob itogakh vypolneniia Gosudarstvennogo plana ekonomichesko- 
go i sotsial'nogo razvitiia SSSR v pervom polugodii 1987 goda," 
Ekonomicheskaia gazeta [Moscow], No. 31, June 1987, 2. 

Pares, Bernard. A History of Russia. New York: Knopf, 1953. 

Planirovanie razvitiia mezhotraslevykh kompleksov. Moscow: Moskovskii 
Universitet, 1982. 

"Porabudit' printsessu," Pravda [Moscow], No. 189, July 8, 1987, 
3. 

Sagers, Matthew J. "New Notes: Soviet Energy Industries," Soviet 

Geography, 30, No. 4, April 1989, 306-35. 
Sagers, Matthew J., and Milford E. Green. "Coal Movements 

in the USSR," Soviet Geography, 25, No. 12, December 1984, 

713-32. 

Scott, William F. "Moscow's Military-Industrial Complex," Air 
Force Magazine, 70, No. 3, March 1987, 46-51. 



945 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Sestanovich, Stephen. "Gorbachev's Secret Foe: The Workers," 

Washington Post, January 11, 1987, CI, C2. 
Seton-Watson, Hugh. The Russian Empire, 1801-1917. Oxford: 

Clarendon Press, 1967. 
Shabad, Theodore. "Geographic Aspects of the New Soviet Five- 

Year Plan, 1986-90," Soviet Geography, 27, No. 1, January 1986, 

1-16. 

The Soviet Union. (2d ed.) Washington: Congressional Quarterly, 
1986. 

Spidchenko, Konstantin. USSR: Geography of the Eleventh Five-Year 

Plan Period. Moscow: Progress, 1984. 
StaV [Moscow], No. 4, April 1987, 1-6. 

Swearingen, Rodger (ed.). Siberia and the Soviet Far East: Strategic 

Dimensions in Multinational Perspective. Stanford, California: Hoover 

Institution Press, 1987. 
Trofimuk, Andrei. "Siberia Unfreezes Its Assets," New Science, 

113, No. 1566, June 25, 1987, 52-54. 
Trubchanin, V.I. "Gorno-prokhodcheskaia tekhnika Yasinovat- 

skogo mashinostroitel'nogo zavoda im. 60-letiia SSSR," UgoV 

Ukrainy [Kiev], No. 5, May 1987, 16. 
United States. Central Intelligence Agency. USSR Energy Atlas. 

Washington: GPO, 1985. 
Central Intelligence Agency and Defense Intelligence 

Agency. "The Soviet Economy Stumbles Badly in 1989." 

Washington: April 20, 1990. 
Congress. 97th, 2d Session. Joint Economic Committee. 

Soviet Economy in the 1980's: Problems and Prospects. Washington: 

GPO, 1983. 

. Congress. 100th, 1st Session. Joint Economic Commit- 
tee. Gorbachev's Economic Plans. (2 vols.) Washington: GPO, 1987. 

Department of Defense. Soviet Military Power: An Assess- 
ment of the Threat, 1988. (7th ed.) Washington: 1988. 

Department of Defense. Soviet Military Power, 1987. 

Washington: GPO, March 1987. 

Wood, Alan (ed.). Siberia: Problems and Prospects . London: Croom 
Helm, 1987. 

Yershov, A. P. "Automation of the Work of Employees: Experience 
of Developed Capitalist Countries," Ekonomika i organizatsiia 
promyshlennogo proizvodstva [Novosibirsk], No. 2, February 1987. 
Joint Publications Research Service, USSR Report: National Econ- 
omy. (JPRS-UNE-87-038.) May 19, 1987, 187-98. 

"Zakrepit' dostignutoe, uskorit' tempy," Izvestiia [Moscow], No. 24, 
January 24, 1988, 3. 



946 



Bibliography 



Chapter 13 

Beaucourt, Chantal. "The Crop Policy of the Soviet Union: Present 
Characteristics and Future Perspectives." Pages 49-69 in Ronald 
A. Francisco , Betty A. Laird, and Roy D. Laird (eds.), Agricul- 
tural Policies in the USSR and Eastern Europe. (Westview Special 
Studies on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.) Boulder, 
Colorado: Westview Press, 1980. 

Bohlen, Celestine. "From Russia, with Hope and Skepticism," 
Washington Post, August 16, 1987, Al, A20. 

. ' 'Gorbachev Stirs Consumer Fears That Food Subsidies 

Are Target," Washington Post, October 23, 1987, A25, A34. 

Buck, Trevor, and John Cole. Modern Soviet Economic Performance. 
Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987. 

Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Basic Directions for the Eco- 
nomic and Social Development of the USSR for 1986-1990 and for the 
Period to the Year 2000. Moscow: Novosti Press Agency, 1985. 

Conolly, Violet. "Siberia: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow." 
Pages 3-39 in Rodger Swearingen (ed.), Siberia and the Soviet Far 
East: Strategic Dimensions in Multinational Perspective. Stanford, 
California: Hoover Institution Press, 1987. 

Dovring, Folke. "Soviet Agriculture: A State Secret," Current His- 
tory, 83, October 1984, 323-26, 338-39. 

Evans, Alfred, Jr. "Changes in the Soviet Model of Rural Trans- 
formation." Pages 143-58 in Robert C. Stuart (ed.), The Soviet 
Rural Economy. Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman and Allanheld, 
1983. 

Francisco, Ronald A., Betty A. Laird, and Roy D. Laird (eds.). 
Agricultural Policies in the USSR and Eastern Europe. (Westview Spe- 
cial Studies on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.) Boulder, 
Colorado: Westview Press, 1980. 

Gagnon, V.P., Jr. "Gorbachev and the Collective Contract 
Brigade," Soviet Studies, 39, No. 1, January 1987, 26-40. 

Goldman, Marshall I. Gorbachev's Challenge: Economic Reform in the 
Age of High Technology. New York: Norton, 1987. 

Gosudarstvennyi komitet po statistike. Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR za 
70 let. Moscow: Finansy i statistika, 1987. 

Jacobs, Everett M. "Soviet Agricultural Management and Plan- 
ning and the 1982 Administrative Reforms." Pages 273-95 in 
Robert C. Stuart (ed.), The Soviet Rural Economy . Totowa, New 
Jersey: Rowman and Allanheld, 1983. 

Johnson, D. Gale, and Karen McConnell Brooks. Prospects for Soviet 
Agriculture in the 1980s. (CSIS Publication Series on the Soviet 
Union in the 1980s.) Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 
1983. 



947 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Joseph, Philip (ed.). The Soviet Economy after Brezhnev. Brussels: North 
Atlantic Treaty Organizations, 1984. 

Kahan, Arcadius. "Shifts to Off-Farm Agricultural Inputs in the 
Tenth Economic Plan: The Economic and Institutional Implica- 
tions." Pages 9-25 in Roy D. Laird, Joseph Hajda, and Betty A. 
Laird (eds.), The Future of Agriculture in the Soviet Union and Eastern 
Europe. (Westview Special Studies on the Soviet Union and Eastern 
Europe.) Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1977. 

Kerblay, Basile. Modern Soviet Society. New York: Pantheon, 1983. 

Kirichenko, V.N. Piatiletka dvenadtsataia: Piatiletka kachestvennykh 
sdvigov. Moscow: Izdatel'stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1986. 

Laird, Roy D. (ed.). Soviet Agricultural and Peasant Affairs. (Slavic 
Studies Series, 1.) Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 
1982. 

Laird, Roy D. , and Betty A. Laird. "The Widening Soviet Grain 
Gap and Prospects for 1980 and 1990." Pages 27-47 in Roy 
D. Laird, Joseph Hajda, and Betty A. Laird (eds.), The Future 
of Agriculture in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. (Westview Spe- 
cial Studies on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.) Boulder, 
Colorado: Westview Press, 1977. 

Laird, Roy D., Joseph Hajda, and Betty A. Laird (eds.). The Fu- 
ture of Agriculture in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. (Westview 
Special Studies on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.) Boul- 
der, Colorado: Westview Press, 1977. 

Lane, David. Soviet Economy and Society. New York: New York Uni- 
versity Press, 1985. 

Litvin, Valentin. "Agro-Industrial Complexes: Recent Structural 
Reform in the Rural Economy of the USSR." Pages 258-72 
in Robert C. Stuart (ed.), The Soviet Rural Economy. Totowa, New 
Jersey: Rowman and Allanheld, 1983. 

. The Soviet Agro- Industrial Complex: Structure and Performance. 

Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1987. 

Lydolph, Paul E. Geography of the USSR. Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin: 
Misty Valley, 1979. 

Manucharova, E. "Otstupit' nekuda: Beseda s ivestnym sovetskim 
ekonomistom akademikom A. Aganbegianom," Izvestiia [Mos- 
cow], No. 237, August 25, 1987, 2. 

Medish, Vadim. The Soviet Union. (3d ed.) Englewood Cliffs, New 
Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1987. 

Medvedev, Zhores A. Soviet Agriculture. New York: Norton, 1987. 

Mikheyev, Dmitry. "The Woes of Farmer Andropov," Worldview, 
27, February 1984, 5-8. 

"New Phenomena in the Private Subsidiary Farm," Voprosy 
ekonomiki [Moscow], July 1987. Joint Publications Research 



948 



Bibliography 



Service, Soviet Union: Economic Affairs. (JPRS-UEA-87-017-L.) 
November 20, 1987, 12-24. 
"Perestroika nabiraet silu," Izvestiia [Moscow], No. 19, January 19, 
1988, 1-3. 

Sergeyev, Valentin. The Breadwinners. Moscow: Progress, 1984. 

Severin, Keith. "An Assessment of the Soviet Food Program." 
Pages 85-1 12 in Philip Joseph (ed.), The Soviet Economy after Brezh- 
nev. Brussels: North Atlantic Treaty Organization, 1984. 

"Soviet Policies on Agriculture, Trade, and the Con- 
sumer." Pages 37-48 in Ronald A. Francisco, Betty A. Laird, 
and Roy D. Laird (eds.), Agricultural Policies in the USSR and Eastern 
Europe. (Westview Special Studies on the Soviet Union and 
Eastern Europe.) Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1980. 

Shatkhan, A.S., V.D. Filippov, S.A. Avakov, and A. P. Kuznet- 
sova(eds.). Razmeshchenie pishchevoi promyshlennosti SSSR. Moscow: 
Legkaia i pishchevaia promyshlennost', 1983. 

Spidchenko, Konstantin. USSR: Geography of the Eleventh Five- Year 
Plan Period. Moscow: Progress, 1984. 

Stanglin, Douglas, and Jeff Trimble. "For Moscow, a Harvest of 
Good News," U.S. News and World Report, September 28, 1987, 
79. 

Stuart, Robert C. "Introduction: Perspectives on the Russian and 
Soviet Rural Economy." Pages 1-17 in Robert C. Stuart (ed.), 
The Soviet Rural Economy. Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman and 
Allanheld, 1983. 

Stuart, Robert C. (ed.). The Soviet Rural Economy. Totowa, New 
Jersey: Rowman and Allanheld, 1983. 

Swearer, Howard R. "Agricultural Administration under Khru- 
shchev." Pages 9-40 in Roy D. Laird (ed.), Soviet Agricultural 
and Peasant Affairs. (Slavic Studies Series, 1.) Westport, Connec- 
ticut: Greenwood Press, 1982. 

Swearingen, Rodger. "The Soviet Far East, East Asia, and the 
Pacific — Strategic Dimensions." Pages 226-72 in Rodger 
Swearingen (ed.), Siberia and the Soviet Far East: Strategic Dimen- 
sions in Multinational Perspective. Stanford, California: Hoover In- 
stitution Press, 1987. 

Swearingen, Rodger (ed.). Siberia and the Soviet Far East: Strategic 
Dimensions in Multinational Perspective. Stanford, California: Hoover 
Institution Press, 1987. • 

Sysoev, N.P. "Rybnaia promyshlennost'." Pages 65-74 in A.S. 
Shatkhan, V.D. Filippov, S.A. Avakov, and A. P. Kuznestsova 
(eds.), Razmeshchenie pishchevoi promyshlennosti SSSR. Moscow: Leg- 
kaia i pishchevaia promyshlennost', 1983. 



949 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Treadgold, Donald W. " Soviet Agriculture in the Light of His- 
tory." Pages 3-8 in Roy D. Laird (ed.), Soviet Agricultural and 
Peasant Affairs. (Slavic Studies Series, 1 .) Westport, Connecticut: 
Greenwood Press, 1982. 

United States. Department of Agriculture. Economic Research 
Service. USSR Situation and Outlook Report. (Regional Report Ser- 
ies, No. RS-86-3.) Washington: GPO, 1986. 

Department of Agriculture. Economic Research Service. 

USSR Situation and Outlook Report. (Regional Report Series, 
No. RS-87-4.) Washington: GPO, 1987. 

"V protsesse perestroiki," Izvestiia [Moscow], No. 200, July 19, 
1987, 1-3. 

Waedekin, Karl-Eugen. "Agroindustrial Associations Take Root 
Across the USSR," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio 
Liberty Research Bulletin [Munich], February 13, 1984, 1-5. 

. "'Contract' and 'Normless' Labor on Soviet Farms: An 

Interpretation and Prognosis," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 
Radio Liberty Research Bulletin [Munich], February 8, 1984, 1-6. 

"The New Kolkhoz Statute: A Codification of Restruc- 
turing on the Farm," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio 
Liberty Research Bulletin [Munich], January 28, 1988, 1-4. 

. "The Private Agricultural Sector in the 1980s," Radio 

Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulletin [Mu- 
nich], August 2, 1985, 1-6. 

"Soviet Agriculture in 1987 and the Private Sector," 

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulle- 
tin [Munich], March 15, 1988, 1-6. 

"Two Agricultural Decrees of September, 1987," Radio 

Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulletin [Mu- 
nich], October 16, 1987, 1-6. 

"What Is New about Brigades in Soviet Agriculture?," 

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulle- 
tin [Munich], February 18, 1985, 1-7. 

Wyzan, Michael L. "The Kolkhoz and the Sovkhoz: Relative Per- 
formance as Measured by Productive Technology." Pages 
173-98 in Robert C. Stuart (ed.), The Soviet Rural Economy. 
Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman and Allanheld, 1983. 

"Zakrepit' dostignutoe, uskorit' tempy," Izvestiia [Moscow], No. 24, 
January 24, 1988, 1-4. 

Chapter 14 

Ambler, John, Denis Shaw, and Leslie Symans (eds.). Soviet and East 
European Transport Problems. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985. 



950 



Bibliography 



Bagrov, L. V. Rechnoi transport Rossii na puti intensifikatsii. Moscow: 
Transport, 1986. 

Belov, I.V. (ed.). Transport strany sovetov. Moscow: Transport, 1987. 

B(oblet), D(ominique). "Le R200 en service commercial," La Vie 
du rail [Paris], August 1986, 14. 

Bock, Bruno, and Klaus Bock. Soviet Bloc Merchant Ships. Annapo- 
lis: Naval Institute Press, 1981. 

Carr, William. "The Soviet Merchant Fleet: Its Economic Role 
and Its Impact on Western Shipping." Pages 663-77 in United 
States Congress, 86th, 1st Session, Joint Economic Committee, 
Soviet Economy in a Time of Change. Washington: GPO, 1979. 

Clayton, Elizabeth M. "Soviet Rural Roads: Problems and 
Prospects," Studies in Comparative Communism [Guildford, United 
Kingdom], 20, No. 2, Summer 1987, 163-73. 

Cole, J. P. Geography of the Soviet Union. Cambridge: Cambridge 
University Press, 1984. 

Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Great Patriotic War of 
the Soviet Union, 1941-1945. Moscow: Progress, 1974. 

Coutou-Begarie, Herve. La puissance maritime sovietique. Paris: 
Economica, 1983. 

"Dritte Strecke der SZD jenseits des Polarkreises," Eisenbahnpraxis 
[East Berlin], No. 3, 1987, 120. 

Ekonomika morskogo transporta. Moscow: Transport, 1987. 

Ermolaev, V. "Zamerli samolety," Pravda [Moscow], 329, Novem- 
ber 25, 1987, 6. 

Flynn, Judith, and Barbara Severin. "Soviet Agricultural Trans- 
port: Bottienecks to Continue." Pages 62-78 in United States 
Congress, 100th, 1st Session. Joint Economic Committee, Gor- 
bachev's Economic Plans. (2 vols.) Washington: GPO, 1987. 

"Fuel Shortage Stops 15 Million Passengers Flying Aeroflot," 
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulle- 
tin [Munich], February 5, 1988, 9. 

Gold, Philip. "A Merchant Fleet That Serves More Than Trade 
Purposes," Insight, March 7, 1988, 30-31. 

Gosudarstvennyi komitet po statistike. Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR za 
70 let. Moscow: Finansy i statistika, 1987. 

Gromov, Panchenko, Chudnovskiy. Edinaia transportnaia sistema. 
Moscow: Transport, 1987. 

Guzhenko, T.B. (ed.). Morskoi transport SSSR: K 60-letiiu otrasli. 
Moscow: Transport, 1984. 

Hunter, Holland. Soviet Transportation Policy. Cambridge: Harvard 
University Press, 1957. 

Hunter, Holland, and Deborah Kaple. The Soviet Railroad Situa- 
tion. Washington: Wharton Econometric Forecasting Associa- 
tion, 1983. 



951 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Hunter, Holland, and Vladimir Kontorovich. "Transport Pres- 
sures and Potentials." Pages 382-96 in United States Congress, 
100th, 1st Session, Joint Economic Committee, Gorbachev's Eco- 
nomic Plans. (2 vols.) Washington: GPO, 1987. 

Jane's All the World's Aircraft, 1985-86. (Comp. and ed., John W.R. 
Taylor.) New York: Jane's, 1985. 

Jane's Military Vehicles and Ground Support Equipment. (Eds., 
Christopher F. Foss and Terry J. Gander.) London: Jane's, 1985. 

Jane's World Railways, 1986-87. (Ed., Jeoffrey Freeman Allen.) Lon- 
don: Jane's, 1986. 

Katz, Zev. The Communications System in the USSR. Cambridge: 
Center for International Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Tech- 
nology, 1987. 

Kazanskii, N.N. (ed.). Geografiia putei soobshcheniia. Moscow: Trans- 
port, 1987. 

Kerezhin, M. "Poezda poidut morskim putem," Ekonomicheskaia 
gazeta [Moscow], No. 40, October 1986, 20. 

Kontorovich, Vladimir. "Discipline and Growth in the Soviet Econ- 
omy," Problems of Communism, 34, No. 6, November-December 
1985, 18-31. 

Long, D.M. The Soviet Merchant Fleet. London: Lloyd's of London 
Press, 1986. 

MacDonald, Hugh. Aeroflot: Soviet Air Transport since 1923. Lon- 
don: Putnam, 1975. 

Moguchii, A. "Shipy i rozy," Moskovskaia pravda [Moscow], 
July 16, 1987, 3. 

Mote, Victor L. "The Communications Infrastructure." Pages 
61-64 in Rodger Swearingen (ed.), Siberia and the Soviet Far East: 
Strategic Dimensions in Multinational Perspective. Stanford, Califor- 
nia: Hoover Institution Press, 1987. 

Mushrub, A.G. (ed.). Razvitie sovetskogo zheleznodorozhnogo transports. 
Moscow: Transport, 1984. 

Nooijer, C.C.M. de. "Countering the Mine Threat," Naval Forces 
[Farnborough, Hampshire, United Kingdom], No. 4, 1985, 67. 

"Reference Aid: Directory of the USSR Ministry of Railways." 
Joint Publications Research Service, Soviet Union: Economic Af- 
fairs. QPRS-UEA-88-025.) June 29, 1988, B-74. 

Sagers, Matthew J., and Milford B. Green. The Transportation of 
Soviet Energy Resources. Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman and Little- 
field, 1986. 

"Samyi dlinnyi poezd," Trud [Moscow], April 19, 1986, 4. 
Shabad, Theodore, and Victor L. Mote. Gateway to Siberian Resources 
(The BAM). New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1977. 



952 



Bibliography 



Shafirkin, B.I. Edinaia transportnaia sistema SSSR i vzaimodeistvie. 
Moscow: Vysshaia shkola, 1983. 

Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr. The Gulag Archipelago, 3-4. New York: 
Harper and Row, 1975. 

Swearingen, Rodger (ed.). Siberia and the Soviet Far East: Strategic 
Dimensions in Multilateral Perspective. Stanford, California: Hoover 
Institution Press, 1987. 

Teeter, Lorie. "Alcatel: Big Soviet Deal," MIS Week, 10, No. 11, 
March 13, 1989, 1, 5. 

United States. Central Intelligence Agency. Directorate of Intelli- 
gence. Directory of Soviet Officials: National Organizations. Washing- 
ton: GPO, August 1983. 

Central Intelligence Agency. Directorate of Intelligence. 

Handbook of Economic Statistics, 1987. Washington: GPO, 1987. 

. Central Intelligence Agency. Directorate of Intelligence. 

USSR Energy Atlas. Washington: GPO, 1985. 

Congress. 86th, 1st Session. Joint Economic Committee. 

Soviet Economy in a Time of Change. Washington: GPO, 1979. 

Congress. 100th, 1st Session. Joint Economic Commit- 
tee. Gorbachev's Economic Plans. (2 vols.) Washington: GPO, 1987. 

Department of Commerce. Statistical Abstract of the United 

States, 1988. Washington: GPO, 1989. 

Department of Defense. Soviet Military Power, 1987. 

Washington: GPO, March 1987. 

White, Paul M. Planning of Urban Transport Systems in the Soviet Union. 
Birmingham, United Kingdom: Centre for Urban and Regional 
Studies, University of Birmingham, 1978. 

York, Michael. "Flying with Aeroflot," Washington Post, Pts. 1-2, 
December 11-12, 1988. 

(Various issues of the following publications were also used in 
the preparation of this chapter: International Railway Journal, 1985-88; 
Rail International [Brussels], 1985-88; and Railway Gazette Interna- 
tional [Surrey, United Kingdom], 1985-88.) 



Chapter 15 

"And All Siberia Still Between," Economist [London], Novem- 
ber 21, 1987, 44. 

Assetto, Valerie J. "The Soviet Union at Bretton Woods." Pages 
53-68 in The Soviet Bloc in the IMF and the IBRD. Boulder, Colo- 
rado: Westview Press, 1988. 



953 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Becker, Abraham S. "Soviet Union and the Third World: The 
Economic Dimension," Soviet Economy, 2, No. 3, July-September 
1986, 233-60. 

Bergson, Abram, and Herbert S. Levine (eds.). The Soviet Econ- 
omy: Toward the Year 2000. London: Allen and Unwin, 1983. 

Brown, Archie, John Fennell, and Michael Kaser (eds.). The Cam- 
bridge Encyclopedia of Russia and the Soviet Union. Cambridge: Cam- 
bridge University Press, 1982. 

Cracraft, James (ed.). The Soviet Union Today: An Interpretive Guide. 
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. 

Czerniejewicz, Wilfried. "Linkage with Europe." Pages 135-57 
in Rodger Swearingen (ed.), Siberia and the Soviet Far East: Stra- 
tegic Dimensions in Multinational Perspective. Stanford, California: 
Hoover Institution Press, 1987. 

Delfs, Robert. "Three Obstacles, Two Leaders, and One Prob- 
lem," Far East Economic Review, March 24, 1988, 56-57. 

Diamond-Kim, Deborah. "Partners in Austerity," China Business 
Review, 14, No. 3, May-June 1987, 12-17. 

Dyker, David A. (ed.). The Soviet Union under Gorbachev: Prospects 
for Reform. London: Croom Helm, 1987. 

Ericson, Richard E. "The New Enterprise Law," Harriman Insti- 
tute FORUM, 1, No. 2, February 1988, 1-8. 

"Foreign Economic Relations." Pages 367-70 in Archie Brown, 
John Fennell, and Michael Kaser (eds.), The Cambridge Encyclope- 
dia of Russia and the Soviet Union. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer- 
sity Press, 1982. 

Galuszka, Peter, and Bill Javetski. "Reforming the Soviet Econ- 
omy," Business Week, No. 3029, December 7, 1987, 76-80, 84, 
88. 

Gardner, H. Stephen. Soviet Foreign Trade: The Decision Process. 
Boston: Kluwer-Nijhoff, 1983. " 

Gorbachev, Mikhail S. "Korennoi vopros ekonomicheskoi politiki 
partii: Doklad tovarishcha m.s. Gorbacheva," Pravda [Moscow], 
No. 163, June 12, 1985, 1. 

"Gorbachev's Speech at ASTEC Reception." British Broadcast- 
ing Corporation, Summary of World Broadcasts [Reading, United 
Kingdom], No. SU/0126, April 15, 1988, A1-A4. 

Gosudarstvennyi komitet po statistike. Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR v 
1987 g. Moscow: Finansy i statistika, 1988. 

Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR za 70 let. Moscow: Finansy i 

statistika, 1987. 

Haberl, Othmar Nikola. "Yugoslavia and the USSR in the Post- 
Tito Era." Pages 276-306 in Pedro Ramet (ed.), Yugoslavia in 
the 1980s. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1985. 



954 



Bibliography 



Hanson, Philip. "Soviet Imports from the West Continue to Fall," 
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulle- 
tin [Munich], No. 129, March 21, 1988, 1-2. 

Hardt, John P., and Jean F. Boone. "Soviet Agriculture: US- 
USSR Grain Sales and Prospects for Expanded Agricultural 
Trade." (Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service, 
Major Issues System, IB86019.) Washington: May 18, 1988, 
1-16. 

"US-Soviet Commercial Relations in a Period of Negotia- 
tion." (Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service, 
Major Issues System, IB88065.) Washington: May 31, 1988, 
1-16. 

Hewett, Ed A. "Foreign Economic Relations." Pages 269-310 in 
Abram Bergson and Herbert S. Levine (eds.), The Soviet Econ- 
omy: Toward the Year 2000. London: Allen and Unwin, 1983. 

Hough, Jerry F. Opening Up the Soviet Economy. Washington: Brook- 
ings Institution, 1988. 

Ivanov, I. "Gosudarstvennaia monopoliia vneshnei torgovli: Formy 
i problemy na 70-letnem rubezhe," Vneshniaia torgovlia [Moscow], 
No. 4, April 1988, 2-4. 

Ivanov, Iu. "Vneshtorgbank SSSR i perestroika mekhanizma 
vneshneekonomicheskoi deiatel'nosti," Vneshniaia torgovlia 
[Moscow], No. 11, November 1987, 12-16. 

Ivanov, Ivan D. "Restructuring the Mechanism of Foreign Eco- 
nomic Relations in the USSR," Soviet Economy, 3, No. 3, July- 
September 1987, 192-218. 

Kanet, Roger E. "Economic Aspects of Soviet Policy in the Third 
World: A Comment," Soviet Economy, 2, No. 3, July-September 

1986, 261-68. 

Lawson, Colin W. "Soviet Economic Aid: Volume, Function, and 
Importance," Development Policy Review [London], 5, September 

1987, 257-76. 

"A Littler List," Economist [London], February 6, 1988, 67. 
Medish, Vadim. "Foreign Trade." Pages 167-71 in Vadim Medish 

(ed.), The Soviet Union. (3d ed.) Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: 

Prentice-Hall, 1987. 
Medish, Vadim (ed.). The Soviet Union. (3d ed.) Englewood Cliffs, 

New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1987. 
Miasoedov, S. "Tikhookeanskii bassein: Problemy sotrudnichestva, " 

Ekonomicheskaia gazeta [Moscow], No. 43, October 1987, 21. 
Ministerstvo vneshnei torgovli. Vneshniaia torgovlia SSSR v 1980 g. 

Moscow: Finansy i statistika, 1981. 
Vneshniaia torgovlia SSSR v 1986 g. Moscow: Finansy i 

statistika, 1987. 



955 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Neu, C.R., and John Lund. Toward a Profile of Soviet Behavior in 
International Financial Markets . Santa Monica, California: Rand, 
August 1987. 

Ogawa, Kazuo. "Economic Relations with Japan." Pages 158-78 
in Rodger Swearingen (ed.), Siberia and the Soviet Far East: Stra- 
tegic Dimensions in Multinational Perspective. Stanford, California: 
Hoover Institution Press, 1987. 

Papp, Daniel S. "Economic Assistance and Trade." Pages 89-117 
in Daniel S. Papp (ed.), Soviet Policies Toward the Developing World 
During the 1980s: The Dilemmas of Power. Maxwell Air Force Base, 
Alabama: Air University Press, December 1986. 

Papp, Daniel S. (ed.). Soviet Policies Toward the Developing World Dur- 
ing the 1980s: The Dilemmas of Power. Maxwell Air Force Base, 
Alabama: Air University Press, December 1986. 

Patterson, Perry L. "Foreign Trade." Pages 210-19 in James 
Cracraft (ed.), The Soviet Union Today: An Interpretive Guide. Chi- 
cago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. 

Rowen, Hobart. "Soviet Economic Envoy Spurns IMF, World 
Bank Membership," Washington Post, February 4, 1988, El, E4. 

Singleton, Fred. "Finnish-Soviet Trade; Project Exports." Pages 
82-93 in Fred Singleton (ed.), The Economy of Finland in the Twen- 
tieth Century. Bradford, United Kingdom: University of Brad- 
ford, 1987. 

Singleton, Fred (ed.). The Economy of Finland in the Twentieth Cen- 
tury. Bradford, United Kingdom: University of Bradford, 1987. 

Smith, Alan H. "Gorbachev and the World — the Economic Side." 
Pages 126-63 in David A. Dyker (ed.), The Soviet Union under 
Gorbachev: Prospects for Reform. London: Croom Helm, 1987. 

Smith, Glen Alden. Soviet Foreign Trade: Organization, Operations, and 
Policy, 1918-1971. New York: Praeger, 1973. 

Smith, Gordon B. (ed.). The Politics of East-West Trade. Boulder, 
Colorado: Westview Press, 1984. 

Sobell, Vladimir. "Oil Prices and the Nature of CEMA Cohesion," 
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Europe Research 
Bulletin [Munich], No. 21, February 19, 1988, 1-6. 

"Soviet and CMEA Foreign Aid in the Age of 'New 

Thinking'," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Eu- 
rope Research Bulletin [Munich], No. 174, September 30, 1987, 1-6. 

United States. Central Intelligence Agency. Directorate of Intelli- 
gence. Directory of Soviet Officials: National Organizations. Washing- 
ton: GPO, 1988. 

Central Intelligence Agency. Directorate of Intelligence. 

Directory of Soviet Officials: Republic Organizations Update. Washing- 
ton: GPO, 1987. 



956 



Bibliography 



. Central Intelligence Agency. Directorate of Intelligence. 

Directory of USSR Foreign Trade Organizations and Officials. Washing- 
ton: GPO, May 1986. 

Central Intelligence Agency. Directorate of Intelligence. 

Handbook of Economic Statistics, 1985. Washington: GPO, Septem- 
ber 1985. 

. Central Intelligence Agency. Directorate of Intelligence. 

Handbook of Economic Statistics, 1987. Washington: GPO, Septem- 
ber 1987. 

Central Intelligence Agency. Directorate of Intelligence. 

"The USSR Confronts the Information Revolution: A Confer- 
ence Report." (Proceedings of Conference held at Airlie House, 
Virginia, November 12-13, 1986.) May 1987, 1-16. 

Central Intelligence Agency and Defense Intelligence 

Agency. Gorbachev 's Economic Program: Problems Emerge. Washing- 
ton: GPO, June 1988. 

. Congress. 100th, 1st Session. Joint Economic Commit- 
tee. Gorbachev's Economic Plans. (2 vols.) Washington: GPO, 1987. 

. Department of State. Bureau of Public Affairs. "Controll- 
ing Transfer of Strategic Technology," Gist, May 1988, 1-2. 

Vernet, Daniel. "Ete finlandais," Le Monde [Paris], July 9, 1988, 
1, 4. 

"V prezidiume verkhovnogo soveta SSSR," Izvestiia [Moscow], 
No. 17, January 17, 1988, 1. 

Wharton Econometric Forecasting Associates Group. "Yugo- 
slavia," Centrally Planned Economic Outlook, 9, No. 1, April 1988, 
3.65-74. 

Wolf, Charles Jr., K.C. Yeh, Edmund Brunner, Jr., Aaron Gurwitz, 
and Marilee Lawrence. The Costs of the Soviet Empire. Santa 
Monica, California: Rand, September 1983. 

(Various issues of the following publications were also used in 
the preparation of this chapter: Business Eastern Europe; Current Digest 
of the Soviet Press; Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Daily 
Report: Soviet Union; Izvestiia [Moscow]; New York Times; Soviet Bus- 
iness and Trade; and Vneshniaia torgovlia [Moscow].) 

Chapter 16 

Alexander, Arthur J. Soviet Science and Weapons Acquisition. Santa 

Monica, California: Rand, 1982. 
Amann, Ronald. "Industrial Innovation in the Soviet Union: 

Methodological Perspectives and Conclusions." Pages 1-37 in 



957 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Ronald Amann and Julian M. Cooper (eds.), Industrial Innova- 
tion in the Soviet Union. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982. 

Amann, Ronald, and Julian M. Cooper (eds.). Industrial Innova- 
tion in the Soviet Union. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982. 

. Technical Progress and Soviet Economic Development. New York: 

Basil Blackwell, 1986. 

Amann, Ronald, Julian M. Cooper, and R.W. Davies (eds.). The 
Technological Level of Soviet Industry. New Haven: Yale Univer- 
sity Press, 1977. 

Balzer, Harley D. "Education, Science, and Technology." Pages 
245-57 in James Cracraft (ed.), The Soviet Union Today: An Inter- 
pretive Guide. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. 

Bertsch, Gary K. "Technology Transfers and Technology Con- 
trols: A Synthesis of the Western-Soviet Relationship." Pages 
1 15-34 in Ronald Amann and Julian M. Cooper (eds.), Techni- 
cal Progress and Soviet Economic Development. New York: Basil Black- 
well, 1986. 

Cocks, Paul. Science Policy: USA/USSR, 2. Washington: GPO, 1980. 

. "Soviet Science and Technology Strategy: Borrowing from 

the Defense Sector." Pages 145-60 in United States, Congress, 
100th, 1st Session, Joint Economic Committee, Gorbachev 's Eco- 
nomic Plans. (2 vols.) Washington: GPO, 1987. 

Cracraft, James (ed.). The Soviet Union Today: An Interpretive Guide. 
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. 

Deutch, Shelley. "The Soviet Weapons Industry: An Overview." 
Pages 405-30 in United States, Congress, 100th, 1st Session, 
Joint Economic Committee, Gorbachev's Economic Plans. (2 vols.) 
Washington: GPO, 1987. 

Fortescue, Stephen. The Communist Party and Soviet Science. Balti- 
more: John Hopkins University Press, 1986. 

Graham, Loren R. "Science and Computers in Soviet Society." 
Pages 347-60 in Frank M. Sorrentino and Frances R. Curcio 
(eds.), Soviet Politics and Education. Lanham, Maryland: Univer- 
sity Press of America, 1986. 

Science, Philosophy, and Human Behavior in the Soviet Union. 

New York: Columbia University Press, 1987. 

. "Science Policy and Organization." Pages 223-33 in 

James Cracraft (ed.), The Soviet Union Today: An Interpretive Guide. 
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. 

Gustafson, Thane. Selling the Russians the Rope? Soviet Technology Policy 
and United States Export Controls. Santa Monica, California: Rand, 
1982. 

Hanson, Philip. "Soviet Imports from the West Continue to Fall," 
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulle- 
tin [Munich], No. 129, March 21, 1988, 1-2. 



958 



Bibliography 



Hanson, Philip, and Keith Pavitt. The Comparative Economics of 
Research, Development and Innovation in East and West: A Survey. 
Switzerland: Harwood Academic Press, 1987. 

Holloway, David. "Innovation in the Defense Sector." Pages 276- 
367 in Ronald Amann and Julian M. Cooper (eds.), Industrial 
Innovation in the Soviet Union. New Haven: Yale University Press, 
1982. 

Joint Publications Research Service — JPRS (Washington). The fol- 
lowing items are from the JPRS series: 
USSR: Science and Technology Policy. 

"Academy of Sciences Election Problems Viewed." (JPRS- 
UST-88-008, May 20, 1988, 51-53.) 

"Decree on Changeover of Science to Cost Accounting, Self- 
Financing." (JPRS-UST-88-007, May 2, 1988, 29-35.) 

"Elections, Functions of Academy Members." (JPRS-UST- 
88-009, July 18, 1988, 84-86.) 

"Experience, Problems of Establishing Interbranch Complexes." 
QPRS-UST-88-007, May 2, 1988, 1-8.) 

"Marchuk on Scope of Academy Restructuring." (JPRS-UST- 
88-009, July 18, 1988, 79-84.) 

"USSR Law on State Enterprise (Associations)." (JPRS- 
UST-88-001, February 8, 1988, 1-4.) 
Kassel, Simon, and Cathleen A. Campbell. The Soviet Academy of 

Sciences and Technological Development. Santa Monica, California: 

Rand, 1980. 

Kelly, William J., Hugh L. Shaffer, and J. Kenneth Thompson. 
Energy Research and Development in the USSR: Preparation for the 
Twenty-First Century. Durham: Duke University Press, 1986. 

Kruse-Vaucienne, Ursula M., and John Logsdon. Science and Tech- 
nology in the Soviet Union: A Profile. Washington: GWLL, 1979. 

Lewis, Robert. Science and Industrialization in the USSR. New York: 
Holmes and Meier, 1979. 

"Marchuk Speech." Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Daily 
Report: Soviet Union. (FBIS-SOV-88-127.) July 1, 1988, 57. 

Medish, Vadim (ed.). The Soviet Union. (3d ed.) Englewood Cliffs, 
New Jersey: Prentice- Hall, 1987. 

Nolting, Louvan E. The Financing of Research, Development, and In- 
novation in the USSR, by Type of Performer. Washington: GPO, 1976. 

Nolting, Louvan E., and Murray Feshback. Statistics on Research 
and Development Employment in the USSR. Washington: GPO, 1981. 

Parrott, Bruce. Politics and Technology in the Soviet Union. Cambridge: 
MIT Press, 1983. 

Parrott, Bruce (ed.). Trade, Technology, and Soviet- American Relations. 
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985. 



959 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Protopopov, V.A. (ed.). Upravlenie sotsialisticheskoi ekonomikoi. 
Moscow: Moskovskii rabochii, 1986. 

"Siberian Scientific Department Roundtable." Foreign Broadcast 
Information Service, Daily Report: Soviet Union. (FBIS- 
SOV-88-01 7.) January 27, 1988, 1-13. 

Smith, Gordon B. Soviet Politics: Continuity and Contradiction. New 
York: St. Martin's Press, 1988. 

United States. Congress. 100th, list Session. Joint Economic Com- 
mittee. Gorbachev's Economic Plans. (2 vols.) Washington: GPO, 
1987. 

"V avangarde tekhnicheskogo progressa," Pravda [Moscow], Oc- 
tober 24, 1986, 1. 

Voronitsyn, Sergei. "Educational Reform on the Eve of the Cen- 
tral Committee Plenum," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 
Radio Liberty Research Bulletin [Munich], December 23, 1987, 1-4. 

Zaleski, E., J.P. Kozlowski, H. Wienert, R.W. Davies, M.J. Berry, 
and R. Amann. Science Policy in the USSR. Paris: Organization 
for Economic Cooperation and Development, 1969. 

(Various issues of the following publications were also used in 
the preparation of this chapter: Foreign Broadcast Information Ser- 
vice, Daily Report: Soviet Union; Joint Publications Research Ser- 
vice, USSR: Science and Technology Policy; and Radio Free Europe/ 
Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulletin [Munich].) 

Chapter 17 

Alexiev, Alexander R. The New Soviet Strategy in the Third World. 

Santa Monica, California: Rand, 1983. 
Baxter, William P. The Soviet Way of Warfare. London: Brassey's 

Defense, 1986. 

Cracraft, James (ed.). The Soviet Union Today: An Interpretive Guide. 

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. 
Currie, Kenneth M., and Gregory Varhall (eds.). The Soviet Union: 

What Lies Ahead? Military-Political Affairs in the 1980s. (Studies in 

Communist Affairs Series, No. 6.) Washington: GPO for United 

States Air Force, 1985. 
Dismukes, Bradford, and James M. McConnell (eds.). Soviet Naval 

Diplomacy. New York: Pergamon Press, 1979. 
Fedoseyev, P.N. (ed.). Disastrous Effects of Nuclear War: Socio- Economic 

Aspects. (International Peace and Disarmament Series.) Moscow: 

Navka, 1985. 



960 



Bibliography 



Fitzgerald, Mary C. "Marshal Ogarkov on the Modern Theater 
Operation," Naval War College Review, 39, No. 4/Sequence 316, 
Autumn 1986, 6-25. 

Freedman, Lawrence. Atlas of Global Strategy. New York: Facts on 
File, 1985. 

Fukuyama, Francis. Soviet Civil-Military Relations and the Power Projec- 
tion Mission. (Project Air Force Series.) Santa Monica, Califor- 
nia: Rand, 1987. 

Gareev, M.A. M.V. Frunze, voennii teoretik. Moscow: Voenizdat, 
1985. 

Garthoff, Raymond L. Soviet Military Policy: A Historical Analysis. 

New York: Praeger, 1966. 
George, James L. (ed.). The Soviet and Other Communist Navies: The 

View from the Mid-1980s. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1986. 
Gorshkov, S.G. Morskaia moshch' gosudarstva. Moscow: Voenizdat, 

1979. 

Grechko, A. A. The Armed Forces of the Soviet Union. Moscow: 
Progress, 1977. 

Jones, David R. (ed.). Soviet Armed Forces Review (annuals 1977 
through 1985). Gulf Breeze, Florida: Academic International 
Press, 1977-1986. 

Kaplan, Stephen S., Michel Tatu, Thomas W. Robinson, et al. 
Diplomacy of Power: Soviet Armed Forces as a Political Instrument. 
Washington: Brookings Institution, 1981. 

Kelley, Paul D. Soviet General Doctrine for War, 1. (Soviet Battlefield 
Development Plan.) Washington: United States Army Intelli- 
gence and Threat Analysis Center, 1987. 

Kozlov, S.N. (ed.). The Officer's Handbook. (Trans., Translation 
Bureau, Secretary of State Department, Ottawa, Canada.) 
Washington: United States Air Force, 1977. 

Kozlov, S.N., D. Volkogonov, and S. Tyushkevich, et al. Marxism- 
Leninism on War and the Army: A Soviet View. (Trans., Progress, 
Moscow.) (Soviet Military Thought Series, 2.) Washington: 
United States Air Force, 1973. 

Lee, William T., and Richard F. Staar. Soviet Military Policy since 
World War II. Stanford, California: Hoover Institution Press, 
1986. 

Leites, Nathan. Soviet Style in War. Santa Monica, California: Rand, 
1982. 

Lomov, N.A. (ed.). Scientific-Technical Progress and the Revolution in 
Military Affairs: A Soviet View. (Trans., United States Air Force.) 
(Soviet Military Thought Series.) Washington: United States 
Air Force, 1973. 



961 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

MccGwire, Michael. Military Objectives in Soviet Foreign Policy. 
Washington: Brookings Institution, 1986. 

Menon, Rajan. Soviet Power and the Third World. New Haven: Yale 
University Press, 1986. 

Milovidov, A.S., and V.G. Kozlov (eds.). The Philosophical Heritage 
of V.I. Lenin and Problems of Contemporary War: A Soviet View. 
(Trans., United States Air Force.) (Soviet Military Thought Ser- 
ies.) Washington: United States Air Force, 1977. 

Odom, William E. "Soviet Force Posture: Dilemmas and Direc- 
tions," Problems of Communism, 34, No. 4, July-August 1985, 4. 

Ogarkov, N.V. Istoriia uchit bditeVnosti. Moscow: Voenizdat, 1985. 

"Strategiia voennaia." Pages 555-65 in Sovetskaia voennaia 

entsiklopediia, 7. Moscow: Voenizdat, 1979. 

Vsegda v gotovnosti k zashchite otechestva. Moscow: Voeniz- 
dat, 1982. 

Osgood, Eugenia V. "Military Strategy in the Nuclear Age." Pages 
1 14-25 in James Cracraft (ed.), The Soviet Union Today: An Inter- 
pretive Guide. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. 

Petersen, Phillip, and John G. Hines. "The Conventional Offen- 
sive in Soviet Theater Strategy," Orbis, Fall 1983, 695-739. 

Radzievskii, A.I. (ed.). Dictionary of Basic Military Terms. (Trans., 
Translation Bureau, Secretary of State Department, Ottawa, 
Canada.) (Soviet Military Thought Series.) Washington: United 
States Air Force, 1976. 

Reznichenko, V.G., I.N. Vorob'ev, et al. Taktika. (Biblioteka ofit- 
sera.) Moscow: Voenizdat, 1984. 

Savkin, V.E. The Basic Principles of Operational Art and Tactics. (Soviet 
Military Thought Series.) Washington: United States Air Force, 
1972. 

Scott, Harriet F. , and William F. Scott. The Soviet Art of War: Doc- 
trine, Strategy and Tactics. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 
1982. 

Scott, William F. Soviet Sources of Military Doctrine and Strategy, 5. 

(Comp., Joseph D. Douglass and Amoretta M. Herber.) New 

York: Crane, Russak, 1975. 
Selected Soviet Military Writings, 1970-1975: A Soviet View. (Trans., 

United States Air Force.) (Soviet Military Thought Series.) 

Washington: United States Air Force, 1976. 
Sidorenko, A. A. The Offensive. (Soviet Military Thought Series.) 

Washington: United States Air Force, 1973. 
Sokolovskiy, V.D. (ed.). Soviet Military Strategy. (Trans, and ed., 

Harriet F. Scott.) New York: Crane, Russak, 1980. 
Sovetskaia voennaia entsiklopediia. (8 vols.) Moscow: Voenizdat, 1976- 

1980. 



962 



Bibliography 



"Soviet Calculus of Nuclear War, " Soviet Union, Special Issue, 10, 
Pts. 2-3, 1983. 

United States. Department of Defense. Soviet Military Power, 1987. 
Washington: GPO, 1987. 

Department of Defense. Soviet Military Power, 1989. 

Washington: GPO, 1989. 

Vigor, Peter H. The Soviet View of War, Peace, and Neutrality. Lon- 
don: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975. 

Voennyi entsiklopedicheskii slovar\ Moscow: Voenizdat, 1983. 

Volkogonov, Dmitrii Antonovich (ed.). Marksistsko-Leninskoe uchenie 
o voine i armii. (Biblioteka ofltsera.) Moscow: Voenizdat, 1984. 

Wolfe, Thomas W. Soviet Strategy at the Crossroads. Cambridge: Har- 
vard University Press, 1964. 

Zhilin, P. A. (ed.). Istoriia voennogo iskusstva. (Biblioteka ofltsera.) 
Moscow: Voenizdat, 1986. 



Chapter 18 

Adams, Emily J. (ed.). Air University Library Index to Military Peri- 
odicals. Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama: Air University 
Library, January-December 1987. 

Adelman, Jonathan R. "The Soviet Army." Pages 1-14 in Jona- 
than R. Adelman (ed.), Communist Armies in Politics. Boulder, 
Colorado: Westview Press, 1982. 

Adelman, Jonathan R. (ed.). Communist Armies in Politics. Boulder, 
Colorado: Westview Press, 1982. 

Alexeev, Michael. "Military Expenditures and the Soviet Econ- 
omy," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research 
Bulletin [Munich], April 22, 1985, 1-14. 

Alexiev, Alexander R., and S. Enders Wimbush (eds.). Ethnic 
Minorities in the Red Army: Asset or Liability? (Rand Corporation 
Research Study.) Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1988. 

Alford, Jonathon. The Soviet Union: Security Policies and Constraints. 
New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985. 

Azrael, Jeremy R. "The Soviet Civilian Leadership and the Mili- 
tary High Command, 1976-1986." (Project Air Force Series, 
R-3521-AF.) Santa Monica, California: Rand, 1987. 

Baxter, William P. Soviet Airland Battle Tactics. Novato, California: 
Presidio Press, 1986. 

Bellamy, Chris. Red God of War: Soviet Artillery and Rocket Forces. Lon- 
don: Brassey's, 1986. 

Berman, Robert P., and John C. Baker. Soviet Strategic Forces: Re- 
quirements and Responses. Washington: Brookings Institution, 1982. 



963 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Blacker, Coit D. "Military Forces." Pages 125-85 in Robert F. 
Byrnes (ed.), After Brezhnev: Sources of Soviet Conduct in the 1980s. 
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983. 

Bonds, Ray (ed.). The Illustrated Directory of Modern Soviet Weapons. 
New York: Prentice-Hall, 1986. 

Breyer, Siegfried. "The Soviet Submarine Force Today," Inter- 
national Defense Review, 20, No. 9, 1987, 1155-59. 

Bridge, T.D. "Gorbachev Reforms: Soviet Army Views," Army 
Quarterly and Defence Journal, 117, No. 4, April 1987, 188-93. 

Byrnes, Robert F. (ed.). After Brezhnev: Sources of Soviet Conduct in 
the 1980s. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983. 

Capaccio, Tony. "Killers or Infiltrators: Pentagon Analysts Differ 
on Wartime Role of New Soviet Forces," Defense Week, 8, No. 34, 
August 24, 1987, 1, 10-11. 

Chitty, David A. "Carrier-Based Aviation in the Soviet Navy," 
Armed Forces, 6, No. 5, May 1987, 221-22. 

Clancy, Tom. "Why Moscow Is No Match for America's Mili- 
tary," Washington Post, January 24, 1988, C1-C2. 

Clawson, Robert W., and Lawrence S. Kaplan (eds.). The War- 
saw Pact: Political Purpose and Military Means. Wilmington, Dela- 
ware: Scholarly Resources, 1982. 

Cockburn, Andrew. The Threat: Inside the Soviet Military Machine. 
New York: Vintage Books, 1984. 

Collins, John M. U.S. -Soviet Military Balance, 1980-1985. Washing- 
ton: Pergamon-Brassey's 1985. 

Collins, Robert F. "Soviet Weaknesses and Problems," Military 
Review, 63, August 1983, 60-72. 

Colton, Timothy J. Commissars, Commanders, and Civilian Authority: 
Structure of Soviet Military Politics. Cambridge: Harvard Univer- 
sity Press, 1979. 

Currie, Kenneth M., and Gregory Varhall (eds.). The Soviet Union: 
What Lies Ahead: Military-Political Affairs in the 1980s. (Studies in 
Communist Affairs Series, No. 6.) Washington: GPO for United 
States Air Force, 1985. 

Davis, Robert B. "Alcohol Abuse and the Soviet Military," A rmed 
Forces and Society, 11, No. 3, Spring 1985, 399-411. 

Dibb, Paul. The Soviet Union: The Incomplete Superpower. Urbana: 
University of Illinois Press, 1986. 

Donnelly, Christopher N. The Soviet Military under Gorbachev. Sand- 
hurst, United Kingdom: Soviet Studies Research Center RMA, 
December 1986. 

Erickson, John, Lynn Hansen, and William Schneider. Soviet Ground 
Forces: An Operational Assessment. Boulder, Colorado: Westview 
Press, 1986. 



964 



Bibliography 



Everett-Heath, John. Soviet Helicopters : Design, Development, and Tac- 
tics. London: Jane's, 1983. 

Gabriel, Richard A. The Antagonists: A Comparative Combat Assess- 
ment of the Soviet and American Soldier. Westport, Connecticut: 
Greenwood Press, 1984. 

George, James L. (ed.). The Soviet and Other Communist Navies: The 
View from the Mid-1980s. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1986. 

Gervasi, Tom. The Myth of Soviet Military Supremacy. New York: 
Harper and Row, 1986. 

Goure, Leon. Civil Defense in the Soviet Union. Westport, Connec- 
ticut: Greenwood Press, 1986. 

Gustafson, Thane. "The Chances of a Military Takeover in the 
Soviet Union," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty 
Research Bulletin [Munich], June 27, 1985, 1-3. 

Herspring, Dale R. "Gorbachev, Yazov, and the Military," 
Problems of Communism, 36, July-August 1987, 99-107. 

Herspring, Dale R., and Ivan Volgyes (eds.). Civil-Military Rela- 
tions in Communist Systems. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 
1978. 

Isby, David C. Weapons and Tactics of the Soviet Army. London: Jane's, 
1981. 

Jones, David R. (ed.). Soviet Armed Forces Review Annual (1984-85), 

9. Gulf Breeze, Florida: Academic International Press, 1986. 
Jones, Ellen. Red Army and Society: A Sociology of the Soviet Military. 

Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1985. 
Keltner, Kenneth M., and Graham H. Turbiville, Jr. "Soviet 

Reinforcement in Europe," Military Review, 67, No. 4, April 

1987, 34-43. 

Kruzhin, Peter. "Are Military Farms Meeting Their Targets?," 
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulle- 
tin [Munich], April 19, 1985, 1-4. 

"Bribery and Corruption in the Soviet Armed Forces," 

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulle- 
tin [Munich], August 2, 1983, New York, 1-3. 

"Draftees, Parents, and Recruiting Offices," Radio Free 

Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulletin [Munich], 
August 11, 1983, 1-3. 

"Fiftieth Anniversary of the General Staff Academy," 

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulle- 
tin [Munich], November 17, 1986, 1-3. 

"Health Problems in the Soviet Army and Navy," Radio 

Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulletin [Mu- 
nich], April 3, 1986, 1-4. 



965 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



. "Military Representation in the Leading Organs of the 

CPSU Following the Twenty-Sixth Congress," Radio Free Eu- 
rope/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulletin [Munich], 
March 16, 1986, 1-9. 

. "Military Representation in the Leading Organs of the 

CPSU Following the Twenty- Seventh Congress," Radio Free 
Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulletin [Munich], 
March 27, 1986, 1-9. 

"Pulling Rank in the Soviet Army," Radio Free Europe/ 

Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulletin [Munich], August 8, 
1983, New York, 1-3. 

. "The Soviet Military Air Transport Force," Radio Free 

Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulletin [Munich], 
September 25, 1981, 1-4. 

"Soviet Military Officers to Undergo Next Round of 

Regular Four- Year Evaluations," Radio Free Europe/Radio 
Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulletin [Munich], February 26, 
1985, 1-2. 

. "Soviet Officers and 'Communist Morality'," Radio Free 

Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulletin [Munich], 
September 21, 1983, New York, 1-3. 

"Veshchizm, a Profitable Sideline for Soviet Officers," 

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulle- 
tin [Munich], September 22, 1983, New York, 1-3. 

Lewis, William J. The Warsaw Pact: Arms, Doctrine, and Strategy. New 
York: McGraw-Hill, 1982. 

Mackintosh, Malcolm. "Power in the Kremlin: Politics and the 
Military," RUSI: Journal of the Royal United Services Institute for 
Defence Studies [London], 129, December 1984, 9-13. 

Maddock, Roland Thomas. The Political Economy of Soviet Defense 
Spending. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988. 

The Military Balance, 1987-1988. London: International Institute 
for Strategic Studies, 1987. 

Moffett, Julie. "Women in the Soviet Armed Forces," Radio Free 
Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulletin [Munich], 
March 13, 1986, 1-6. 

Mullinex, Klaus M. "The Soviet Military: Its Power in Soviet Poli- 
tics," Military Review, 65, April 1985, 66-76. 

Murphy, Bill. "Political-Military Relations in the USSR," Radio 
Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Reserach Bulletin [Mu- 
nich], October 23, 1984, 1-16. 

Murphy, Paul J. (ed.). The Soviet Air Forces. Jefferson, North Caro- 
lina: McFarland, 1984. 



966 



Bibliography 



Odom, William E. " Soviet Force Posture: Dilemmas and Direc- 
tions," Problems of Communism, 34, No. 4, July- August 1985, 
1-14. 

Petersen, Charles C. "Aircraft Carrier Development in Soviet 
Naval Theory," Naval War College Review, 37, January- February 
1984, 4-13. 

Plummer, R.C.F. "The Soviet Army — A View from Inside the 
Soviet Union," Army Quarterly and Defense Journal, 117, No. 1, 
January 1987, 7-13. 

Polmar, Norman. Guide to the Soviet Navy. Annapolis: Naval Insti- 
tute Press, 1986. 

Reitz, James T. "The Soviet Armed Forces: Perceptions over 
Twenty Years." Pages 111-36 in Robert W. Clawson and 
Lawrence S. Kaplan (eds.), The Warsaw Pact: Political Purpose and 
Military Means. Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources, 
1982. 

Scott, Harriet F., and William F. Scott. The Armed Forces of the USSR. 

Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1984. 
Scott, William F. "Moscow's Military-Industrial Complex," Air 

Force Magazine, 70, No. 3, March 1987, 46-51. 
Seaton, Albert. The Soviet Army: 1918 to the Present. New York: New 

American Library, 1986. 
Sheehy, Ann. "Concern about Preparedness of Central Asians for 

Military Service," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio 

Liberty Research Bulletin [Munich], May 30, 1986, 1-2. 
Solomon, Richard H. , and Masataka Kosaka (eds.). The Soviet Far 

East Military Buildup: Nuclear Dilemmas and Asian Security. Dover, 

Massachusetts: Auburn House, 1986. 
Strode, Dan L., and Rebecca V. Strode. "Diplomacy and Defense 

in Soviet National Security Policy," International Security, 8, Fall 

1983,91-116. 

Suvorov, Viktor. Inside the Soviet Army. New York: Macmillan, 1982. 

Tarasulo, Yitzhak. "A Profile of the Soviet Soldier," Armed Forces 
and Society, 11, Winter 1985, 221-34. 

Taylor, John W.R., and R.A. Mason. Aircraft, Strategy, and Opera- 
tions of the Soviet Air Force. London: Jane's, 1986. 

Thompson, Graham N. "Tactical Air Defence for Soviet Ground 
Forces," Armed Forces, 6, No. 5, May 1987, 213-17. 

Thompson, Graham N., James Kinnear, and Alaric Searle. "Fight- 
ing in a Toxic Environment: Chemical Defence Capability in 
the Soviet Ground -Forces," Armed Forces, 6, September 1987, 
400-404. 

United States. Defense Intelligence Agency. "Soviet Chemical 
Weapons Threat 1985." (DST-1620F-051-85.) Washington: 
1985. 



967 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



. Department of Defense. Soviet Military Power, 1989. 

Washington: GPO, March 1989. 

Department of Defense. The Soviet Space Challenge. Washing- 
ton: GPO, November 1987. 

Department of Defense and Department of State. Soviet 

Strategic Defense Programs. Washington: GPO, October 1985. 

Warner, Edward L., Ill, Josephine J. Bonan, and Erma F. Pack- 
man. Key Personnel and Organizations of the Soviet Military High Com- 
mand. (Rand Note, N-2567-AF.) Santa Monica, California: 
Rand, 1987. 

Weickhardt, George G. "The Soviet Military-Industrial Complex 

and Economic Reform," Soviet Economy, 2, No. 3, 1986, 193-220. 
Weinstein, John M. "Soviet Offensive Strategic Nuclear Forces: 

Evolution and Prospects," Parameters: Journal of the U.S. Army War 

College, 15, Winter 1985, 29-40. 
Wettig, Gerhard. "Sufficiency in Defense — A New Guideline for 

the Soviet Military Posture," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 

Radio Liberty Research Bulletin [Munich], September 23, 1987, 1-5. 
Whiting, Kenneth R. The Development of the Soviet Armed Forces, 

1917-1977. Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama: Air University 

Press, 1977. 

"Soviet Air Power." Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama: 

Air University Press, 1985. 

Williams, E.S. "'Restructuring' and the SRF," Armed Forces, 6, 
No. 4, April 1987, 175. 

The Soviet Military: Political Education, Training, and Morale. 

New York: St. Martin's Press, 1986. 

Williams, John Allen. "The U.S. and Soviet Navies: Missions and 
Forces," Armed Forces and Society, 10, Summer 1984, 507-28. 

Zamascikov, Sergei. "The Role of the Military in the Social In- 
tegration of Ethnic Muslims in the USSR," Radio Free Eu- 
rope/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulletin [Munich], 
December 23, 1983, 1-21. 



Chapter 19 

Barghoorn, Frederick C. "The Security Police." Pages 33-51 in 
H. Gordon Skilling and Franklyn Griffiths (eds.), Interest Groups 
in Soviet Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971. 

Barron, John. KGB: Secret Work of Soviet Secret Agents. New York: 
Readers Digest Press, 1974. 

KGB Today: The Hidden Hand. New York: Readers Digest 

Press, 1983. 



968 



Bibliography 



Soviet Criminal Law and Procedure. Cambridge: Harvard 

University Press, 1972. 

Barry, Donald, George Ginsburgs, and Peter Maggs (eds.). Soviet 
Law after Stalin, Pt. 2: Social Engineering Through Law. The Hague: 
Sijthoff and Noordhoff, 1978. 

Berman, HJ. " Soviet Law Reform — Dateline Moscow," Yale Law 
Journal, 8, 1957, 1192-98. 

Berman, H.J., and J.W. Spindler. Soviet Criminal Law and Proce- 
dure. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972. 

Bialer, Seweryn. The Soviet Paradox: External Expansion, Internal 
Decline. New York: Knopf, 1986. 

Bittman, Ladislav. The KGB and Soviet Disinformation: An Insider's 
View. Washington: Pergamon-Brassey's, 1985. 

Brzezinski, Zbigniew K. The Permanent Purge: Politics in Soviet 
Totalitarianism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964. 

Butler, William. Soviet Law. London: Butterworths, 1983. 

Campbell, Robert W. "Satellite Communications in the USSR," 
Soviet Economy, 1, No. 4, October-December 1985, 330-39. 

Conquest, Robert. The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Thirties. New 
York: Collier, 1973. 

Inside Stalin's Secret Police: NKVD Politics, 1936-39. Stan- 
ford, California: Hoover Institution Press, 1985. 

Deriabin, Peter, with T.H. Bagley. "Fedorchuk, the KGB, and 
the Soviet Succession," Orbis, 26, No. 3, Fall 1982, 611-36. 

Dziak, John. "Soviet Intelligence and Security Services in the Eight- 
ies: The Paramilitary Dimension," Orbis, No. 4, Winter 1982, 
771-86. 

Fuller, William. "The Internal Troops of the MVD SSSR." (Col- 
lege Station Papers, No. 6.) College Station, Texas: 1983. 

Hingley, Ronald. The Russian Police: Muscovite, Imperial Russian, and 
Soviet Security Operations, 1565-1970. London: Hutchinson, 1970. 

Huskey, Eugene. "The Politics of the Soviet Criminal Process: 
Expanding the Right to Counsel in Pre-Trial Proceeding, ' ' Ameri- 
can Journal of Comparative Law, 35, No. 1, Winter 1986, 93-112. 

Jones, David (ed.). Soviet Armed Forces Review Annual. Gulf Breeze, 
Florida: Academic International Press, 1982. 

Knight, Amy W. The KGB: Police and Politics in the Soviet Union. 
Boston: Unwin-Hyman, 1988. 

"The KGB's Special Departments in the Soviet Armed 

Forces," Orbis, 28, No. 2, Summer 1984, 257-80. 

Kotkov, V., and V. Zhuravlev. "Iz istorii vnutrennikh voisk," 
Voenno-istoricheskii zhurnal [Moscow], No. 11, 1972, 90-95. 

Lampert, Nick. "Law and Order in the USSR: The Case of Eco- 
nomic and Official Crime," Soviet Studies , 34, No. 3, July 1984, 
366-85. 



969 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Leggett, George. The Cheka: Lenin's Political Police. Oxford: Claren- 
don, 1986. 

Levytsky, Boris. The Uses of Terror: The Soviet Secret Police, 1917-1970. 
New York: Coward, McCann, and Geoghegan, 1972. 

Medvedev, Zhores. Andropov. New York: Norton, 1983. 

Reddaway, Peter. "Dissent in the Soviet Union," Problems of Com- 
munism, 33, No. 6, November-December 1983, 1-15. 

Reitz, James T. "The Soviet Security Troops — The Kremlin's 
Other Armies." Pages 243-72 in David Jones (ed.), Soviet Armed 
Forces Review Annual. Gulf Breeze, Florida: Academic Interna- 
tional Press, 1982. 

Richelson, Jeffrey T. Sword and Shield: Soviet Intelligence and Security 
Apparatus. Cambridge: Ballinger, 1986. 

Schultz, Richard H., and Roy Godson. Dezinformatsia: Active Mea- 
sures in Soviet Strategy. Washington: Pergamon-Brassey's, 1984. 

Sharlet, Robert. "Dissent and Repression in the Soviet Union," 
Current History, 73, No. 430, October 1977, 112-30. 

. "Legal Policy under Khrushchev and Brezhnev: Continu- 
ity and Change." Pages 319-30 in Donald Barry, George Gins- 
burghs, and Peter Maggs(eds.), Soviet Law after Stalin, Pt. 2: Social 
Engineering Through Law. The Hague: Sijthoff and Noordhoff, 
1978. 

Shevchenko, Arkady. Breaking with Moscow . New York: Ballantine, 
1985. 

Skilling, Gordon, and Franklyn Griffiths (eds.). Interest Groups in 

Soviet Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971. 
Smith, Gordon B. Soviet Politics: Continuity and Contradiction. New 

York: St. Martin's Press, 1988. 
Solovyov, Vladimir. "Knowing the KGB," Partisan Review, 99, 

No. 2, 1982, 167-83. 
Van den Berg, Ger P. "The Council of Ministers of the Soviet 

Union," Review of Socialist Law [Leiden], 6, No. 3, September 

1980, 292-323. 

Voslensky, Michael. Nomenklatura: Anatomy of the Soviet Ruling Class. 

London: Bodley Head, 1984. 
Wolin, Simon, and Robert Slusser (eds.). The Soviet Secret Police. 

New York: Praeger, 1957. 

(Various issues of the following publications were also used in 
the preparation of this chapter: Foreign Broadcast Information Ser- 
vice, Daily Report: Soviet Union; Izvestiia [Moscow]; Pravda [Moscow]; 
and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty Research Bulletin 
[Munich].) 



970 



Bibliography 



Appendix B 

Ausch, Sandor. Theory and Practice of CMEA Cooperation. Budapest: 
Akademiai Kiado, 1972. 

Chukanov, O.A. (ed.). Nauchno-tekhnicheskoe sotrudnichestvo stran SEV. 
Moscow: Ekonomika, 1986. 

de Weydenthal, J.B. "The Realities of Economic Integration," 
Radio Free Europe, RAD Background Report [Munich], 160 
November 7, 1986. 

Diehl, Jackson. "Bloc Tries to Reconcile Imports, Home Indus- 
try," Washington Post, October 20, 1986, A 1, A 18. 

"Pursuit of Technology Risks Upheaval in Political Sys- 
tem," Washington Post, October 21, 1986, Al, A24. 

East European Economic Handbook. London: Euromonitor, 1985. 

Hannigan, John, and Carl McMillan. "Joint Investment in Re- 
source Development: Sectoral Approaches to Socialist Inte- 
gration." Pages 259-95 in United States, Congress, 97th, 1st 
Session, Joint Economic Committee, East European Economic As- 
sessment. Washington: GPO, 1981. 

Hewett, Edward A. "The Impact of the World Economic Crisis 
on Intra-CMEA Trade." Pages 323-48 in Egon Neuberger and 
Laura D' Andrea Tyson (eds.), The Impact of International Economic 
Disturbances on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. New York: Per- 
gamon Press, 1980. 

Holzman, Franklyn D. "CMEA's Hard Currency Deficits and 
Ruble Convertibility." Pages 144-63 in Nita G.M. Watts (ed.), 
Economic Relations Between East and West. London: Macmillan, 
1978. 

Karavaev, V.P. Integratsiia i investitsii: Problemy sotrudnichestva stran 
SEV. Moscow: Nauka, 1979. 

Katushev, K. "Sotrudnichestvo vo imia velikih tselei sotsializma 
i kommunizma," Ekonomicheskoe sotrudnichestvo stran-chlenov SEV 
[Moscow], No. 1, January 1979, 4-11. 

Kohn, M J., and N.R. Lang. "The Intra-CMEA Foreign Trade Sys- 
tem: Major Price Changes, Littie Reform." Pages 135-51 in 
United States, Congress, 95th, 1st Session, Joint Economic Com- 
mittee, East European Economies Post- Helsinki. Washington: 1977. 

"A Little Late in Learning the Facts of Life," Economist [London], 
295, No. 7390, April 20, 1985. 

Marer, Paul. "The Political Economy of Soviet Relations with 
Eastern Europe." Pages 155-88 in S.M. Terry (ed.), Soviet Policy 
in Eastern Europe. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984. 

Marer, Paul, and John Michael Montias (eds.). East European In- 
tegration and East- West Trade. Bloomington: Indiana University 
Press, 1980. 



971 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Medvedev, Boris. "Sovershenstvovanie struktury ekonomiki," 
Ekonomicheskoe sotrudnichestvo stran-chlenov ££F [Moscow], No. 2, 
1986, 70-75. 

Mellor, Roy E.H. "The Genesis of Comecon and the Sovietiza- 

tion of Eastern Europe." Pages 221-48 in Roy E.H. Mellor (ed.), 

Eastern Europe: A Geography of the Comecon Countries. New York: 

Columbia University Press, 1975. 
Mellor, Roy E.H. (ed.). Eastern Europe: A Geography of the Comecon 

Countries. New York: Columbia University Press, 1975. 
The Multilateral Economic Cooperation of Socialist States: A Collection of 

Documents. Moscow: Progress, 1977. 
Neuberger, Egon, and Laura D 'Andrea Tyson (eds.). The Impact 

of International Economic Disturbances on the Soviet Union and Eastern 

Europe. New York: Pergamon Press, 1980. 
Nicolae, Petre. CMEA in Theory and Practice. Falls Church, Virginia: 

Delphic, 1984. 

Pecsi, K. "Nekotorye problemy ustanovleniia tsen vo vzaimnoi 
torgovle stran SEV," Mirovaia ekonomika i mezhdunarodnye otno- 
sheniia [Moscow], No. 9, September 1979, 93-101. 

Prybyla, Jan S. "The Dawn of Real Communism: Problems of 
Comecon," Conflict Quarterly [New Brunswick, Canada], 29, 
No. 2, Summer 1985, 387-402. 

Schiavone, Giuseppe. The Institutions of Comecon. London: Macmil- 
lan, 1981. 

SEV: ReaVnosti iperspektivy sotrudnichestva. Moscow: Sekretariat SEV, 
1985. 

SEV: Tsifry, fakty, argumenty. Moscow: Sekretariat SEV, 1982. 

SEV: Voprosy i otvety. Moscow: Sekretariat SEV, 1985. 

Shastitko, V.M. (ed.). Vneshniaia torgovlia SSSR so stranami SEV. 
Moscow: Nauka, 1986. 

Shiriaev, Iu.S, and N.N. Khmelevskii. "SEV: Uglublenie sotsia- 
listicheskoi ekonomicheskoi integratsii," Ekonomika [Moscow], 
No. 1, 1986, 16. 

Sobell, Vladimir. "The CMEA Scientific Program Gets More 
(Soviet) Teeth," Radio Free Europe, RAD Background Report [Mu- 
nich], 49, April 8, 1986. 

. "Mikhail Gorbachev Takes Charge of the CMEA, ' ' Radio 

Free Europe, RAD Background Report [Munich], 146, Decem- 
ber 20, 1985. 

"The Shifting Focus of CMEA Integration," Radio Free 

Europe, RAD Background Report [Munich], 159, November 7, 
1986. 

Statisticheskii ezhegodnik stran-chlenov SEV. Moscow: Finansy i statis- 
tika, 1985. 



972 



Bibliography 



Tarasov, L. "Ekonomika stran-chlenov SEV v 1981-1985 gg," 
Voprosy ekonomiki [Moscow], July 1986. 

Terry, S.M. (ed.). Soviet Policy in Eastern Europe. New Haven: Yale 
University Press, 1984. 

United States. Congress. 95th, 1st Session. Joint Economic Com- 
mittee. East European Economies Post- Helsinki. Washington: GPO, 
1977. 

. Congress. 97th, 1st Session. Joint Economic Committee. 

East European Economic Assessment. Washington: GPO, 1981. 

van Brabant, Jozef M. East European Cooperation: The Role of Money 
and Finance. (Studies in International Business, Finance, and 
Trade.) New York: Praeger, 1977. 

. Socialist Economic Integration. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- 
versity Press, 1980. 

Vanous, Jan. "Eastern European and Soviet Fuel Trade, 1970- 
1985." Pages 541-60 in United States, Congress, 97th, 1st Ses- 
sion, Joint Economic Committee, East European Economic Assess- 
ment. Washington: GPO, 1981. 

Watts, Nita G.M. (ed.). Economic Relations Between East and West. 
London: Macmillan, 1978. 

(Various issues of the following publication were also used in 
the preparation of this appendix: Joint Publications Research Ser- 
vice, USSR Report on Economic Affairs.) 



Appendix C 

Adelman, Jonathan R. (ed.). Communist Armies in Politics. Boulder, 
Colorado: Westview Press, 1982. 

Superpowers and Revolution. New York: Praeger, 1986. 

Alexiev, Alex. ''The Romanian Army." Pages 149-66 in Jona- 
than R. Adelman (ed.), Communist Armies in Politics. Boulder, 
Colorado: Westview Press, 1982. 

Alexiev, Alexander, and A. Ross Johnson. East European Military 
Reliability: An Emigre-Based Assessment. Santa Moncia, California: 
Rand, 1986. 

Alford, Jonathan (ed.). The Soviet Union: Security Policies and Con- 
straints. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985. 

Atkeson, Edward B. "The 'Fault Line' in the Warsaw Pact: Im- 
plications for NATO Strategy," Orbis, 30, No. 1, Spring 1986, 
111-32. 

Broadhurst, Arlene Idol (ed.). The Future of European Alliance Sys- 
tems: NATO and the Warswaw Pact. Boulder, Colorado: Westveiw 
Press, 1982. 



973 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Byrnes, Robert F. (ed.). After Brezhnev: Sources of Soviet Conduct in 
the 1980s. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983. 

Caravelli, John M. "Soviet and Joint Warsaw Pact Exercises: Func- 
tions and Utility," Armed Forces and Society, 9, Spring 1983, 393- 
426. 

Checinski, Michael. "Warsaw Pact/CMEA Military-Economic 
Trends," Problems of Communism, 36, No. 2, March-April 1987, 
15-28. 

Clawson, Robert W., and Lawrence S. Kaplan (eds.). The War- 
saw Pact: Political Purpose and Military Means . Wilmington, Dela- 
ware: Scholarly Resources, 1982. 

Copper, John F., and Daniel S. Papp (eds.). Communist Nations' 
Military Assistance. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1983. 

Crane, Keith. Military Spending in Eastern Europe. Santa Monica, 
California: Rand, 1987. 

Donnelly, Christopher. "The Military Significance of the Polish 
Crisis." Pages 10-13 in RUSI and Brassey's Defence Yearbook, 1983. 
London: Brassey's, 1983. 

Erickson, John. "The Warsaw Pact: From Here to Eternity," Cur- 
rent History, 84, No. 505, November 1985, 357-60, 387. 

Getman, LP. 30-letie Varshavskogo dogovora, ukazateV literatury 1970- 
1984 gg. Moscow: MISON, 1985. 

Grechko, A. A., et al. (eds.). Sovetskaia voennaia entsiklopediia. Moscow: 
Voenizdat, 1976. 

Herspring, Dale R. "The Warsaw Pact at 25," Problems of Com- 
munism, 29, No. 5, September-October 1980, 1-15. 

Hollo way, David, and Jane M.O. Sharp (eds.). The Warsaw Pact: 
Alliance in Transition? Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984. 

Hutchings, Robert L. Foreign and Security Policy Coordination in the 
Warsaw Pact. (Berichte 15-1985.) Cologne: Bundesinstitut fur 
Ostwissenschaftliche und Internationale Studien, 1985. 

Jones, Christopher D. Soviet Influence in Eastern Europe: Political Auton- 
omy and the Warsaw Pact. (Studies of Influence in International 
Relations.) New York: Praeger, 1981. 

"The USSR, the Warsaw Pact, and NATO." Pages 15- 

36 in Ingmar Oldberg (ed.), Proceedings of a Symposium on Unity 
and Conflict in the Warsaw Pact. Stockholm: Swedish National 
Defence Research Institute, 1984. 

"Warsaw Pact Exercises: The Genesis of a Greater So- 
cialist Army?" Pages 429-50 in David R. Jones (ed.), Soviet Armed 
Forces Review Annual. Gulf Breeze, Florida: Academic Interna- 
tional Press, 1984. 

Jones, David R. (ed.). Soviet Armed Forces Review Annual. Gulf Breeze, 
Florida: Academic International Press, 1984. 



974 



Bibliography 



Kaplan, Stephen S. (ed.). Diplomacy of Power: Soviet Armed Forces 
as a Political Instrument. Washington: Brookings Institution, 1981. 

Korbonski, Andrzej. "Eastern Europe." Pages 290-344 in Robert 
F. Byrnes (ed.), After Brezhnev: Sources of Soviet Conduct in the 1980s. 
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983. 

Korbonski, Andrzej, and Lubov Fajfer. "The Soviet Union and 
Two Crises in Poland." Pages 241-65 in Jonathan R. Adelman 
(ed.), Superpowers and Revolution. New York: Praeger, 1986. 

Lewis, William J. The Warsaw Pact: Arms, Doctrine, and Strategy. Cam- 
bridge: Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, 1982. 

McGregor, Douglas A. "Uncertain Allies? East European Forces 
in the Warsaw Pact," Soviet Studies, 38, No. 2, April 1986, 227- 
47. 

Mackintosh, Malcolm. "Developments in Alliance Politics: The 
Warsaw Pact." Pages 147-64 in RUSI and Brassey's Defence Year- 
book, 1986. London: Brassey's 1986. 

Maltsev, V.F., et al. (eds.). Organizatsiia Varshavskogo dogovora, 
1955-1985: Dokumenty i materialy. Moscow: Politizdat, 1986. 

Martin, Richard C. "Warsaw Pact Force Modernization: A Closer 
Look," Parameters, 15, No. 2, Summer 1985, 3-11. 

Nelson, Daniel N. Alliance Behavior in the Warsaw Pact. (Westview 
Special Studies on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.) Boul- 
der, Colorado: Westview Press, 1986. 

Nelson, Daniel N. (ed.). Soviet Allies: The Warsaw Pact and the Issue 
of Reliability. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1984. 

Nelson, Daniel N., and Joseph Lepgold. "Alliances and Burden- 
sharing: A NATO-Warsaw Pact Comparison," Defense Analy- 
sis, 2, September 1986, 205-24. 

Oldberg, Ingmar (ed.). Proceedings of a Symposium on Unity and Con- 
flict in the Warsaw Pact. Stockholm: Swedish National Defence 
Research Institute, 1984. 

Orlik, I.I. Vneshniaia politika stran Varshavskogo dogovora, pervaya polo- 
vina 80-kh godov. Moscow: Nauka, 1986. 

Papp, Daniel S. "Soviet Military Assistance to Eastern Europe." 
Pages 13-38 in John F. Copper and Daniel S. Papp (eds.), Com- 
munist Nations' Military Assistance. Boulder, Colorado: Westview 
Press, 1983. 

Petrovskii, V.F. Sovetskaia kontseptsiia bezopastnosti. Moscow: Nauka, 
1986. 

Radzievskii, S. "Voennoe sotrudnichestvo i soglasovanie usilii stran 

antigitlerovskoi koalitsii, ' ' Voenno-istoricheskii zhurnal [Moscow] , 

June 1982, 39-47. 
Rakowska-Harmstone, Teresa. The Warsaw Pact: The Question of 

Cohesion. (ORAE Extra-Mural Papers, Nos. 29, 33, and 39.) 

Ottawa: Department of National Defence, 1984. 



975 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Remington, Robin Alison. "Western Images of the Warsaw Pact," 
Problems of Communism, 36, No. 2, March-April 1987, 69-80. 

Rice, Condoleezza. "Warsaw Pact Reliability: The Czechoslovak 
People's Army." Pages 125-42 in Daniel N. Nelson (ed.), Soviet 
Allies: The Warsaw Pact and the Issue of Reliability. Boulder, Colo- 
rado: Westview Press, 1984. 

Rice, Condoleezza, and Michael Fry. "The Hungarian Crisis of 
1956: The Soviet Decision." Pages 181-99 in Jonathan R. 
Adelman (ed.), Superpowers and Revolution. New York: Praeger, 
1986. 

RUSI and Brassey's Defence Yearbook, 1983. London: Brassey's, 1983. 

Savinov, K.I. Varshavskii dogovor—faktor mira, shchit sotsialisma. 
Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 1986. 

Shtemenko, S.M. "Varshavskii dogovor." Pages 20-22 in A. A. 
Grechko et al. (eds.), Sovetskaia voennaia entsiklopediia. Moscow: 
Voenizdat, 1976. 

Simon, Jeffrey. Warsaw Pact Forces: Problems of Command and Con- 
trol. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1985. 

Simon, Jeffrey, and Trono Gilberg (eds.). Security Implications of 
Nationalism in Eastern Europe. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 
1986. 

Skorodenko, P.P. Vo glave boevogo soiuza: Kommunisticheskie partii — 
sozdateli i rukovoditeli organizatsii Varshavskogo dogovora. Moscow: 
Voenizdat, 1985. 

Staar, Richard F. "Soviet Relations with East Europe," Current 
History, 83, No. 496, November 1984, 353-56, 386-87. 

Tatu, Michel. "Intervention in Eastern Europe." Pages 205-64 
in Stephen S. Kaplan (ed.), Diplomacy of Power: Soviet Armed Forces 
as a Political Instrument. Washington: Brookings Institution, 1981. 

Valenta, Jiri. "Perspectives on Soviet Intervention: Soviet Use of 
Surprise and Deception." Pages 157-68 in Jonathan Alford (ed.), 
The Soviet Union: Security Policies and Constraints. New York: St. 
Martin's Press, 1985. 

Volgyes, Ivan. The Political Reliability of the Warsaw Pact Armies: The 
Southern Tier. (Duke Press Policy Studies.) Durham: Duke Uni- 
versity Press, 1982. 

' 'The Reliability of the Warsaw Pact Armies. ' ' Pages 350- 

77 in Kenneth M. Currie and Gregory Varhall (eds.), The Soviet 
Union: What Lies Ahead? Military -Political Affairs in the 1980s. 
Washington: GPO, 1985. 

Volkogonov, D.A., et al. Armii stran Varshavskogo dogovora: Spravoch- 
nik. Moscow: Voenizdat, 1985. 

Zhilin, P. A. , et al. Stroitelstvo armii evropeiskhikh stran sotsialisticheskogo 
sodruzhestva 1949-1980. Moscow: Nauka, 1984. 



976 



Bibliography 

(Various issues of the following publication were also used in 
the preparation of this appendix: Joint Publications Research Serv- 
ice, Soviet Union: Military Affairs.) 



977 



Glossary 



Academy of Sciences (Akademiia nauk) — The Soviet Union's most 
prestigious scholarly institute, which conducted basic research 
in the physical, natural, mathematical, and social sciences. Es- 
tablished in 1725 by Peter the Great, it carried out long-range 
research and developed new technology. Union republics (q.v.) 
also had academies of sciences. The Academy of Sciences was 
under the direction of the Council of Ministers. 

active measures (aktivnye meropriiatiia) — Covert or deceptive oper- 
ations (including the creation and dissemination of disinfor- 
mation) conducted in support of Soviet foreign policy and 
designed to influence the opinions or actions of the general pub- 
lic, particular individuals, or foreign governments. 

Agitprop (Otdel agitatsii i propagandy) — Agitation and Propaganda 
Department, established by the Central Committee of the party 
in 1920. Absorbed by the Ideological Department in 1988. The 
term agitprop means the use of mass media to mobilize the public 
to accomplish the regime's demands. 

AirLand Batde doctrine — A United States Army doctrine, adopted 
in the early 1980s, for generating combat power by using air 
and land assets on an extended and integrated battlefield. 

all-union — National, with purview throughout the entire territory 
of the Soviet Union. 

all-union ministries — Ministries of the Soviet central government 
that did not have counterpart ministries at the republic level. 
Other ministries were termed union-republic ministries (q.v.). 

apparatchik — Russian colloquial expression for a person of the party 
apparatus, i.e., an individual who has been engaged full time 
in the work of the CPSU (q.v.). Sometimes used in a deroga- 
tory sense. 

army — In general usage, the armed forces of the Soviet Union ex- 
cept the navy. In military usage, an army in the Ground Forces 
usually consisted of two to five divisions. 

autocephalous — Independent or self-governing; an Orthodox 
church that was headed by its own patriarch (q.v.). 

autonomous oblast — A territorial and administrative subdivision 
of a union republic (q.v.), or of a krai (q.v.) in the Russian 
Republic, created to grant a degree of autonomy to a national 
minority within that krai or union republic. In 1989 the Soviet 
Union had eight autonomous oblasts, five of which were in the 
Russian Republic. 

979 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



autonomous okrug — A territorial and administrative subdivision of 
a krai (q. v. ) or oblast (q. v. ) in the Russian Republic that granted 
a degree of administrative autonomy to a nationality; usually 
found in large, remote areas of sparse population. In 1989 the 
Soviet Union had ten autonomous okruga, all of which were 
in the Russian Republic. 

autonomous republic (autonomous soviet socialist republic — 
ASSR) — A territorial and administrative subdivision of some 
union republics (q.v.), created to grant a degree of adminis- 
trative autonomy to some major minority groups. Directly 
subordinate to its union republic. In 1989 the Soviet Union 
had twenty autonomous republics, sixteen of which were in the 
Russian Republic. 

babushka — Literally, grandmother. Generally, any old woman. 

balance of payments — The international transactions of a coun- 
try, including commodity and service transactions, capital trans- 
actions, and gold movements. 

balance of trade — The relationship between a country's exports and 
imports. 

BAM (Baykalo-Amurskaya Magistral' — Baykal-Amur Main 
Line) — A second trans-Siberian railroad, running 100 to 500 
kilometers north of the original Trans-Siberian Railway (q.v.) 
and extending 3,145 kilometers from the western terminus at 
Ust'-Kut to the eastern terminus at Komsomol 'sk-na-Amure. 
Opened in 1989, the BAM was designed and built to relieve 
traffic on the Trans-Siberian Railway, lessen rail traffic's vul- 
nerability to Chinese military incursion, and facilitate trans- 
port of natural resources from huge, unexploited deposits in 
eastern Siberia. 

Basmachi Rebellion — A sporadic and protracted revolt by Mus- 
lims of Central Asia against Soviet rule beginning in 1918 and 
continuing in some parts of Central Asia until 1931. 

bilateral clearing agreements — The basis of the Soviet Union's trade 
with most socialist countries and some market economies (Fin- 
land and India). Trade imbalances were not normally cleared 
by convertible currency payments. Instead, the value of ex- 
ports equaled the value of imports (for each country) over a 
specified period of time. 

blat — Profitable connections, influence, pull, or illegal dealings, 
usually for personal gain. 

Bolshevik — A member of the radical group within the Russian So- 
cial Democratic Labor Party (q.v.), which, under Vladimir I. 
Lenin's leadership, staged the Bolshevik Revolution (q.v.). The 
term boVshevik means a member of the majority (boU shenstvo) 



980 



Glossary 



and was applied to the radical members of the Russian Social 
Democratic Labor Party after they won a majority of votes cast 
at a party congress (q.v.) in 1903. In March 1918, the Bolsheviks 
formed the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik) and began 
calling themselves Communists. That party was the precursor 
of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU — q.v.). 
Bolshevik Revolution — The coup organized by Lenin and carried 
out by the Bolsheviks (q.v.) that overthrew the Provisional 
Government in November 1917 (October 1917, according to 
the Julian calendar — q.v.). Also known as the October Revo- 
lution. 

boyar — A hereditary nobleman in Muscovy (q.v.) and the early 
Russian Empire (q.v.). 

Brezhnev Doctrine — The Soviet Union's declared right to inter- 
vene militarily to prevent other states from eliminating the lead- 
ing role of the communist party and returning to capitalism 
once they have achieved socialism. First expressed after 
Czechoslovakia's Prague Spring in 1968 and used as justifica- 
tion for the Soviet Union's invasion of Czechoslovakia in Au- 
gust 1968. In the late 1980s, Mikhail S. Gorbachev made 
statements interpreted by some in the West as repudiating the 
Brezhnev Doctrine. 

cadre — Organized group of party activists. A party member who 
holds a responsible position (usually administrative) in either 
the party or the government apparatus. In a more restricted 
sense, a person who has been fully indoctrinated in party ideol- 
ogy and methods and uses this training in his or her work. 

capitalist encirclement — A term coined by Joseph V. Stalin to in- 
dicate that the Soviet Union was surrounded by capitalist states 
pursuing political, military, and economic policies aimed at 
weakening and destroying the Soviet regime. 

Carpatho-Ukraine (before October 1938 known as Subcarpathian 
Ruthenia) — An area historically belonging to Hungary but at- 
tached to Czechoslovakia from 1918 to October 1938. In Oc- 
tober 1938, Carpatho-Ukraine became autonomous, and in 
March 1939, it became independent. But Hungary occupied 
it nine days later and, after World War II, ceded the area to 
the Soviet Union. Populated mostly by Ukrainians, who, prior 
to World War II, were sometimes referred to as Ruthenians. 

Charter to the Nobility — An edict, granted by Catherine the Great, 
that increased and confirmed the personal and class privileges 
of the nobility. 

Cheka — See Vecheka. 



981 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Chernobyl' — A town in the Ukrainian Republic, site of the world's 
most catastropic nuclear accident. On April 26, 1986, a reactor 
at the Chernobyl' nuclear power plant exploded and irradiated 
areas as far away as Sweden. Most radioactivity contaminated 
large sections of rich farmland in the Ukrainian, Russian, and 
Belorussian republics and affected millions of their inhabitants. 
Soviet and Western experts believe that damage to the peo- 
ple's health, to the economy, and to the environment will be 
felt for decades. As of 1989, the accident had cost hundreds 
of lives and billions of rubles, caused a major slowdown in what 
had been an ambitious nuclear energy program, and provided 
an impetus to the fledgling environmental movement in the 
Soviet Union. Although the accident was caused by a combi- 
nation of human error and faulty reactor design, the remain- 
ing three reactors at the Chernobyl' power plant and reactors 
of this type remained operational elsewhere in the Soviet Union 
in 1989. 

chernozem — Literally, black earth. The zone of rich, black soil that 
extends across the southwestern Soviet Union. 

class struggle — In Marxist terms, every nonsocialist society has been 
characterized by conflict between the classes of which it has 
been composed. The struggle has pitted the workers against 
the privileged, oppressive, and property-owning ruling class. 

CoCom (Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Con- 
trols) — Formed by Western governments in 1949 to prevent 
the transfer of military-related technology from the West to the 
Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. In 1989 members of CoCom 
included Belgium, Britain, Canada, Denmark, the Federal 
Republic of Germany (West Germany), France, Greece, Italy, 
Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, 
Spain, Turkey, and the United States. With no formal rela- 
tionship to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 
CoCom operated on informal agreements on items having mili- 
tary applications and those with nuclear uses. 

collective farm (kollektivnoe khoziaistvo — kolkhoz) — An agricultural 
"cooperative" where peasants, under the direction of party- 
approved plans and leaders, are paid wages based, in part, on 
the success of their harvest. 

collectivization — Stalin's policy of confiscating privately owned 
agricultural lands and facilities and consolidating them, the 
farmers, and their families into large collective farms (q.v.) and 
state farms (q.v.). Forced collectivization took place from 1929 
to 1937. 



982 



Glossary 



combat readiness — The availability of equipment and qualified per- 
sonnel in military organizations capable of conducting com- 
bat operations. Motorized rifle and tank divisions of the Soviet 
Ground Forces were maintained in three general categories of 
combat readiness: those divisions with sufficient personnel and 
equipment to begin combat operations after brief preparation; 
those with the necessary equipment but with less than 50 per- 
cent of wartime manpower; and those that were inactive and 
essentially unmanned equipment sets. 

combine (kombinat) — An economic entity of an industrial or ser- 
vice nature that consists of several specialized, technologically 
related enterprises (q.v.). 

Comecon (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance) — A multi- 
lateral economic alliance headquartered in Moscow. Members 
in 1989 were Bulgaria, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, the German 
Democratic Republic (East Germany), Hungary, Mongolia, 
Poland, Romania, the Soviet Union, and Vietnam. Comecon 
was created in January 1949, ostensibly to promote economic 
development of member states through cooperation and speciali- 
zation, but actually to enforce Soviet economic domination of 
Eastern Europe and to provide a counterweight to the Marshall 
Plan (q.v.). Also referred to as CEMA or CMEA. 

Cominform (Communist Information Bureau) — An international 
organization of communist parties, founded and controlled by 
the Soviet Union in 1947 and dissolved in 1956. The Comin- 
form published propaganda touting international communist 
solidarity but was primarily a tool of Soviet foreign policy. 

Comintern (Communist International) — An international organi- 
zation of communist parties founded by Lenin in 1919. Ini- 
tially, it attempted to control the international socialist (q.v.) 
movement and to foment world revolution; later, it also be- 
came an instrument of Soviet foreign policy. Dissolved by Stalin 
in 1943 as a conciliatory measure toward his Western allies. 

communism/communist — A doctrine, based on revolutionary 
Marxian socialism (q.v.) and Marxism-Leninism (q.v.), and 
the official ideology of the Soviet Union. The doctrine provided 
for a system of authoritarian government in which the com- 
munist party alone controlled state-owned means of produc- 
tion. It sought to establish a society in which the state withers 
away and goods and services are distributed equitably. A com- 
munist is an adherent or advocate of communism. 

complex (kompleks) — An aggregate of entities constituting a whole. 
Sometimes applied to groupings of industries. 



983 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Congress of People's Deputies — The highest organ of legislative 
and executive authority, according to the Soviet Constitution. 
Existed in the early Soviet period as the Congress of Soviets 
(q. v. ) and was resurrected in 1988 by constitutional amendment. 

Congress of Soviets — First met in June 1917 and elected the All- 
Russian Central Committee of over 250 members dominated 
by the leaders of the Petrograd Soviet. The Second Congress 
of Soviets met on October 25, 1917, one day after the start 
of the Bolshevik Revolution (q.v.). Dominated by Bolshevik 
delegates, the Second Congress of Soviets approved the Bol- 
shevik coup d'etat and the decrees on peace and land issued 
by Lenin. It also confirmed the Council of People's Commis- 
sars, drawn exclusively from Bolshevik ranks, as the new 
government and elected the All-Russian Central Executive 
Committee. It adjourned on October 27 and was not recon- 
vened. 

correlation of forces and resources (sootnosheniie sil i sredstv) — A Soviet 
term meaning the aggregate of indexes permitting evaluation 
of the relative strength of friendly and hostile troops, by com- 
parative analysis of the quantitative and qualitative characteris- 
tics of troop organization, performance data on armament and 
combat materiel, and other indexes that define combat readi- 
ness (q.v.) and combat capability. 

cossacks — Originally peasants, primarily Ukrainian and Russian, 
who fled from bondage to the lower Dnepr and Don river 
regions to settle in the frontier areas separating fifteenth-century 
Muscovy (q.v.), Poland, and the lands occupied by Tatars. The 
cossacks, engaged in hunting, fishing, and cattle raising, es- 
tablished permanent settlements and later organized themselves 
into military formations to resist Tatar raids. Renowned as 
horsemen, they were absorbed into the Russian army as light 
cavalry or irregular troops by the late eighteenth century. 

Council of Ministers — The highest executive and administrative 
body of the Soviet Union, according to the Constitution. In 
practice, its members directed most day-to-day state activities. 

CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) — The official name 
of the communist party in the Soviet Union since 1952. Origi- 
nally the Bolshevik (q. v. ) faction of the Russian Social Demo- 
cratic Labor Party (q.v.), the party was named the Russian 
Communist Party (Bolshevik) from March 1918 to December 
1925, the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik) from De- 
cember 1925 to October 1952, and the CPSU thereafter. 

cult of personality — A term coined by Nikita S. Khrushchev at the 
Twentieth Party Congress of the CPSU in 1956 to describe 



984 



Glossary 



the rule of Stalin, in which the Soviet people were compelled 
to deify the dictator. Leonid I. Brezhnev also established a cult 
of personality around himself, although to a lesser extent than 
Stalin. Similar cults of saints, heroes, and the just tsar formed 
a historical basis for the cult of personality. 

Cyrillic — An alphabet based on Greek characters that was created 
in the ninth century to serve as a medium for translating Eastern 
Orthodox texts into Old Church Slavonic (q.v.). Named for 
Cyril, the leader of the first religious mission from Byzantium 
to the Slavic people, Cyrillic is used in modern Russian and 
several other Slavic languages. 

Defense Council — The chief decision-making organ of the Soviet 
national security apparatus, composed of selected members of 
the Politburo (q. v. ) and headed by the general secretary (q. v. ) 
of the CPSU (q.v.) and the chairman of the Presidium (q.v.) 
of the CPSU Central Committee. 

democratic centralism — A Leninist doctrine requiring discussion 
of issues until a decision is reached by the party. After a deci- 
sion is made, discussion concerns only planning and execution. 
This method of decision making directed lower bodies uncon- 
ditionally to implement the decisions of higher bodies. 

demokratizatsiia (democratization) — Campaign initiated by Gor- 
bachev to enable different interest groups to participate in po- 
litical processes to a greater extent than previously allowed. 

dialectical materialism — A Marxist (q.v.) tenet describing the 
process by which the class struggle between bourgeois capitalist 
society and the exploited workers produces the dictatorship of 
the proletariat (q.v.) and evolves into socialism (q.v.) and, fi- 
nally, communism (q.v.). 

dictatorship of the proletariat — According to Marxism-Leninism 
(q.v.), the early stage of societal organization under socialism 
(q.v.) after the overthrow of capitalism. It involves workers' 
dominance in suppressing the counterrevolutionary resistance 
of the bourgeois "exploiting classes." 

Donbass (Donetskiy basseyn) — Donets Basin. A major coal-mining 
and industrial area located in the southeastern Ukrainian 
Republic and the adjacent Russian Republic. 

DOSAAF (Dobrovol'noe obshchestvo sodeistviia armii, aviatsii i 
flotu) — Voluntary Society for Assistance to the Army, Air 
Force, and Navy. Responsible for premilitary training of Soviet 
youth. 

duma — An advisory council to the princes of Kievan Rus' (q.v.) 
and the tsars of the Russian Empire (q.v.). 



985 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Duma — Lower chamber of the legislature, established by Nicho- 
las II after the Revolution of 1905. 

East Slavs — A subdivision of Slavic peoples, who evolved into Rus- 
sians, Ukrainians, and Belorussians and speak languages be- 
longing to the East Slavic branch of the Indo-European family 
of languages. 

enterprise — A production establishment, such as a plant or a fac- 
tory; not to be confused with a privately owned, We stern- style 
business. 

extensive economic development — Expansion of production by add- 
ing resources rather than by improving the efficiency of resource 
use, as in intensive economic development. 

False Dmitrii — Name applied to three pretenders to the Musco- 
vite throne during the Time of Troubles (q. v.). These pretenders 
claimed to be Dmitrii (who died as a child), the son of Tsar 
Ivan IV. 

February Revolution — The popular uprising that overthrew the 
government of the Russian Empire (q. v. ) under Tsar Nicholas 
II in February 1917 (according to the Julian calendar — q. v.), 
thus ending 300 years of rule by the Romanov Dynasty. 

first secretary — The title of the head of the CPSU (q. v. ) Secretariat 
that was adopted after Stalin's death in 1953; used by Khru- 
shchev, and by Brezhnev until 1966, before the title was changed 
back to general secretary (q.v.). 

fiscal year — A one-year period for financial accounting purposes, 
which can coincide with the calendar year (as it did in the Soviet 
Union). 

five-year plan — A comprehensive plan that sets the economic goals 
for a five-year period. Once the Soviet regime stipulated the 
plan figures, all levels of the economy, from individual enter- 
prises to the national level, were obligated to meet those goals. 

FOFA (Follow-on-Forces-Attack) — A North Atlantic Treaty Or- 
ganization (NATO) military concept emphasizing deep offen- 
sive operations against the enemy's second-echelon (follow-on) 
forces. 

free trade zones — Areas where autonomy is allowed in conduct- 
ing direct trade with foreigners. 

front — In military usage, a front consists of two or more armies 
(q.v.). Two or more fronts constitute a theater of military oper- 
ations (TVD — q.v.). In political usage, an organization con- 
trolled by the Soviet regime (through funding links and Soviet 
officials in leading positions) to support Soviet policies through 
lobbying and propaganda. 



986 



Glossary 



GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) — An integrated 
set of bilateral trade agreements among more than 100 con- 
tracting nations. Originally drawn up in 1947, GATT aimed 
at abolishing quotas and reducing tariffs among members. The 
Soviet Union eschewed joining GATT until 1987, when it ap- 
plied for membership. As of May 1989, its application had not 
been approved. 

GDP (gross domestic product) — A measure of the total value of 
goods and services produced by the domestic economy during 
a given period, usually one year. Obtained by adding the value 
contributed by each sector of the economy in the form of profits, 
compensation to employees, and depreciation (consumption of 
capital). Only domestic production is included, not income aris- 
ing from investments and possessions owned abroad, hence the 
use of the word domestic to distinguish GDP from gross national 
product (GNP— q.v.). Real GDP is the value of GDP when 
inflation has been taken into account. 

general secretary — The title of the head of the CPSU (q.v.) 
Secretariat, who presides over the Politburo (q. v. ) and has been 
the Soviet Union's de facto supreme leader. Stalin became 
general secretary of the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik) 
in 1922 and employed the position to amass personal power. 
After Stalin's death in 1953, the title was changed to first secre- 
tary (q.v.), which was used by Khrushchev and by Brezhnev 
until 1966, when the title of general secretary was reinstituted. 
Brezhnev's successors — Iurii Andropov, Konstantin Cher- 
nenko, and Mikhail S. Gorbachev — were all general secretaries. 

glasnosV — Public discussion of issues; accessibility of information 
so that the public can become familiar with it and discuss it. 
Gorbachev's policy of using the media to make information 
available on some controversial issues, in order to provoke pub- 
lic discussion, challenge government and party bureaucrats, 
and mobilize greater support for his policy of perestroika (q.v.). 

Glavlit — The official censorship organ, established in 1922 as the 
Main Administration for Literary and Publishing Affairs (Glav- 
noe upravlenie po delam literatury i izdatv — Glavlit). Although 
the formal name of that organization has since been changed 
to the Main Administration for Safeguarding State Secrets in 
the Press (Glavnoe upravlenie po okhrane gosudarstvennykh 
tain v pechati), the acronym Glavlit continued to be used in 
the late 1980s. 

Glavrepertkom (Glavnyi komitet po kontroliu za zrelishchami i 
repertuarom) — Main Committee for Control of Entertainment 
and Repertory. The governmental organization that directed 



987 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

theatrical, film, and other cultural productions and sanctioned 
their release for public viewing. The acronym, Glavrepertkom, 
continued in use although the organization was changed from 
a committee (komitet) to an administration (upravelenie) under 
the Ministry of Culture. 

GNP (gross national product) — The total market value of final 
goods and services produced by an economy during a year. 
Obtained by adding the gross domestic product (GDP — q. v. ) 
and the income received from abroad by residents and sub- 
tracting payments remitted abroad to nonresidents. Real GNP 
is the value of GNP when inflation has been taken into account. 

Golden Horde — A federative Mongol state that extended from 
western Siberia to the Carpathian Mountains, encompassing 
much of eastern Europe. It ravaged Kievan Rus' (q.v.), sub- 
jugated Muscovy (q.v.) to the Mongol "yoke" (q.v.), and was 
a major political force from the mid-thirteenth century to the 
end of the fifteenth century. Generally, it exacted tribute and 
controlled external relations but allowed local authorities to de- 
cide internal affairs. The term is derived from the Mongol altan 
ordo or the Tatar altun ordu, literally meaning golden palace or 
camp, apparently based on the color of the tent used by Batu 
Khan (died 1255), the leader or ruler, during the Golden Horde's 
conquest of the region. Also known as the khanate of Kipchak. 

Gosbank (Gosudarstvennyi bank) — State Bank. The main bank 
in the Soviet Union, which acted as a combination central bank, 
commercial bank, and settlement bank. It issued and regulated 
currency and credit and handled payments between enterprises 
(q.v.) and organizations. It received all taxes and payments to 
the state and paid out budgetary appropriations. 

Goskino (Gosudarstvennyi komitet po kinematografii) — State Com- 
mittee for Cinematography. Absorbed by the Ministry of Cul- 
ture in 1953, it became an independent organization again in 
1963. 

Goskomizdat (Gosudarstvennyi komitet po delam izdatel'stv, 
poligrafii i knizhoy torgovli) — State Committee for Publish- 
ing Houses, Printing Plants, and the Book Trade. Supervises 
the publishing and printing industry and exercises all-union 
(q.v.) control over the thematic trend and content of literature. 

Goskompriroda (Gosudarstvennyi komitet po okhrane prirody) — 
State Committee for the Protection of Nature. Formed in 1988, 
the government agency charged with responsibility for over- 
seeing environmental protection in the Soviet Union. 

Goskomtsen (Gosudarstvennyi komitet po tsenam) — State Com- 
mittee on Prices. The government body that established, under 



988 



Glossary 



party guidance, the official prices of virtually everything 
produced in the Soviet Union, including agricultural produce, 
natural resources, manufactured products, and consumer goods 
and services. 

Gosplan (Gosudarstvennyi planovyi komitet) — State Planning 
Committee. Under party guidance, it was primarily responsi- 
ble for creating and monitoring five-year plans (q. v.) and an- 
nual plans. The name was changed from State Planning 
Commission in 1948, but the acronym was retained. 

Gostelradio (Gosudarstvennyi komitet po televideniyu i radiovesh- 
chaniyu) — State Committee for Television and Radio Broad- 
casting. Established in 1957 as the Committee for Radio 
Broadcasting and Television. Upgraded to a state committee 
in 1970. 

GPU (Gosudarstvennoe politicheskoe upravlenie) — State Political 
Directorate. The security police successor to the Vecheka (q.v.) 
from 1922 to 1923. 

Great Patriotic War — The Soviet name for the part of World War 
II in which the Soviet people fought against fascism from June 
1941 to May 1945. Considered one of the just wars (q.v.) by 
the CPSU (q.v.). 

Great Terror — A period, from about 1934 to 1939, of intense fear 
among Soviet citizens, millions of whom were arrested, inter- 
rogated, tortured, imprisoned, deported from their native lands, 
and executed by Stalin's secret police for political or economic 
crimes that were spurious. The Great Terror encompassed the 
general population and peaked in 1937 and 1938, when it in- 
cluded extensive purges of party members, many of whom held 
high positions in the government, economy, armed forces, 
party, and secret police itself. 

GRU — See Main Intelligence Directorate. 

GUGB (Glavnoe upravlenie gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti) — Main 
Directorate for State Security. The security police, successor 
to the OGPU (q.v.), subordinate to the NKVD (q.v.). Existed 
from 1934 to 1941, 1941 to 1943, and 1953 to 1954. 

Gulag (Glavnoe upravlenie ispravitel'no-trudovykh lagerei) — Main 
Directorate for Corrective Labor Camps. The penal system of 
the Soviet Union, consisting of a network of harsh labor camps 
where criminals and political prisoners were forced to serve sen- 
tences. 

hard currency — Currency that was freely convertible and traded 
on international currency markets. 

Helsinki Accords — Signed in August by all the countries of Eu- 
rope (except Albania) plus Canada and the United States at 



989 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

the conclusion of the Conference on Security and Cooperation 
in Europe, the Helsinki Accords endorsed general principles 
of international behavior and measures to enhance security and 
addressed selected economic, environmental, and humnitar- 
ian issues. In essence, the Helsinki Accords confirmed exist- 
ing, post-World War II national boundaries and obligated 
signatories to respect basic principles of human rights. Helsinki 
watch groups (q.v.) were formed in 1976 to monitor compli- 
ance. The term Helsinki Accords is the short form for the Final 
Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe 
and is also known as the Final Act. 

Helsinki watch groups — Informal, unofficial organizations of 
citizens monitoring their regimes' adherence to the human 
rights provisions of the 1975 Helsinki Accords (q.v.). 

horde — A Mongol military force of about 30,000 to 40,000 troops 
mounted on horseback that was roughly equivalent in size to 
a modern army corps. A territory conquered by a horde (ordo 
in Mongol) was organized into a khanate (q.v.). Troops of the 
horde were accompanied by their families, and their descen- 
dants were gradually assimilated into the peoples that they con- 
quered. 

IMF (International Monetary Fund) — Established along with the 
World Bank (q.v.) in 1945, the IMF is a specialized agency 
affiliated with the United Nations and responsible for stabiliz- 
ing international exchange rates and payments. Its main func- 
tion is to provide loans to its members (including industrialized 
and developing countries) when they experience balance of pay- 
ments (q.v.) difficulties. These loans frequently have conditions 
that require substantial internal economic adjustments by the 
recipients, most of which are developing countries. 

intelligentsia — Intellectuals constituting the cultural, academic, so- 
cial, and political elite. 

internal passport — Government-issued document, presented to offi- 
cials on demand, identifying citizens, their nationality, and their 
authorized residence. Used in both the Russian Empire (q.v.) 
and the Soviet Union to restrict the movement of people. 

Izvestiia (News) — Daily, nationwide newspaper published by the 
Presidium (q.v.) of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. 

Julian calendar — A calendar, named for Gaius Julius Caesar and 
introduced in Rome in 46 B.C., that established the twelve- 
month year of 365 days. It was adopted throughout much of 
the Western world, including Kievan Rus' (q.v.) and Muscovy 
(q.v.). The Julian calendar's year, however, was over eleven 
minutes too long compared with the solar year, i.e., the time 



990 



Glossary 



the earth requires to make one revolution around the sun. Be- 
cause of this discrepancy, Pope Gregory XIII introduced a re- 
vised calendar in 1582 that had a shortened year and then 
omitted the ten excess days that had accumulated since A.D. 
325, the year of the Council of Nicea, which was chosen as 
the base year. Although most of the Western world adopted 
the Gregorian calendar, Russian regimes retained the Julian 
calendar (termed old style or O.S.) until after the Bolshevik 
Revolution (q.v.). On February 1, 1918 O.S. , the Bolsheviks 
introduced the Gregorian calendar and omitted the thirteen 
excess days that had accumulated since A.D. 325, thus mak- 
ing that day February 14, 1918 (new style or N.S.). The Rus- 
sian Orthodox Church and other Eastern Christian churches 
continue to use the Julian calendar. 

just wars — According to Marxism-Leninism (q.v.), just wars are 
those waged to protect the interests of the working class and 
the toiling masses, to liquidate social and national oppression, 
and to protect national sovereignty against imperialist aggres- 
sion. The most just wars are those waged in defense of the so- 
cialist fatherland. In contrast, unjust wars are reactionary or 
predatory wars waged by imperialist countries. 

Karakum Canal — An irrigation and water supply canal, which is 
navigable, in the Turkmen Republic. Under construction since 
1954, the 1,100 kilometers completed by 1988 diverted a sig- 
nificant amount of the Amu Darya's waters west through and 
into the Kara Desert and Ashkhabad, the republic's capital, 
and beyond. The canal opened up expansive new tracts of land 
to agriculture, while contributing to a major environmental dis- 
aster, the drying up of the Aral Sea. The primitive construc- 
tion of the canal allows almost 50 percent of the water to escape 
en route. 

Kazakhstan — Literally, land of the Kazakhs. A vast region in Cen- 
tral Asia settled by the Golden Horde (q. v. ) in the thirteenth 
century that the Russian Empire (q.v.) acquired during the 
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In 1924 the Soviet regime 
began dividing Kazakhstan into its major nationality groups, 
the Kazakhs and the Kirgiz. Subsequently, both of these groups 
were given union republic (q.v.) status in the Soviet Union. 

KGB (Komitet gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti) — Committee for 
State Security. The predominant security police organization 
since its establishment in 1954. 

khanate — Dominion or territorial jurisdiction of a Mongol khan 
(ruler). 



991 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

khozraschet — A system of "self-supporting operations," applied to 
such individual enterprises (q. v.) as factories, encompassing a 
wide range of activities, including samofinansirovanie (q.v.), and 
a management process involving a large number of individuals. 

Kievan Rus' — An East Slavic state, centered on Kiev, established 
by Oleg ca. 880. Disintegrated by the thirteenth century. 

kolkhoz (pi., kolkhozy) — See collective farm. 

Komsomol (Vsesoiuznyi Leninskii kommunisticheskii soiuz molo- 
dezhi) — Ail-Union Lenin Communist Youth League. An or- 
ganization administered by the CPSU (q. v. ) for youth between 
ages fourteen and twenty-eight. Since its establishment in 1918, 
the Komsomol has helped the party prepare new generations 
for an elite role in Soviet society. It has instilled in young peo- 
ple the principles of Marxism-Leninism (q. v. ) and involved 
them in large-scale industrial projects, such as factory construc- 
tion and the virgin land campaign (q.v.). Members were ex- 
pected to be politically conscious, vigilant, and loyal to the 
communist cause. Membership privileges included better op- 
portunities for higher education and preferential consideration 
for career advancement. In 1982 the Komsomol had 41.7 mil- 
lion members. 

krai (pi., kraia) — A large territorial and administrative subdivision 
found only in the Russian Republic, where there are six, all 
of which are thinly populated. The boundaries of a krai are laid 
out primarily for ease of administration but may also contain 
lesser political subdivisions based on nationality groups — 
autonomous oblast (q. v.), or autonomous okrug (q. v.), or both. 
Directly subordinate to its union republic (q.v.). 

kremlin (kreml*) — Central citadel in many medieval Russian towns, 
usually located at a strategic spot along a river. Moscow's 
Kremlin is now the seat of the CPSU (q. v. ) and the govern- 
ment of the Soviet Union. 

kulak — A successful, independent farmer of the period of Soviet 
history before collectivization (q.v.). According to the Bolsheviks 
(q.v.), any peasant who hired labor. The term eventually was 
applied to any peasant who opposed collectivization. 

Kuzbass (Kuznetskiy basseyn) — Kuznetsk Basin. A major coal- 
mining and industrial area located in southern Siberia, east 
and southeast of Novosibirsk. 

League of Nations — An organization for international cooperation, 
established by the victorious Allied Powers at the end of World 
War I. The Soviet Union joined in 1934 but was expelled in 
1939. 



992 



Glossary 



Lend-Lease Law — A foreign aid program initiated by the United 
States in March 1941 that authorized the transfer of substan- 
tial quantities of war materiel, such as tanks, munitions, 
locomotives, and ships, to countries opposing the military ag- 
gression of the Axis Powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan) while 
the United States mobilized for war. In November 1941, the 
Soviet Union was added to the list of recipients and, during 
the course of World War II, received supplies and equipment 
worth billions of dollars. 

liquidity shortage — A lack of assets that can be readily converted 
to cash. 

local war — Armed conflict short of general war, usually waged with 
limited forces and in a limited area. In Soviet usage, local war 
usually referred to a war waged by capitalist countries against 
"wars of national liberation." 

Main Intelligence Directorate (Glavnoe razvedyvatel'noe 
upravlenie — GRU) — A military organization, subordinate to 
the General Staff of the armed forces, that collected and 
processed strategic, technical, and tactical information of value 
to the armed forces. It may also have included special units 
for engaging in active measures (q.v.), guerrilla warfare, and 
sabotage. 

Main Political Directorate of the Soviet Army and Navy — The 
organ the CPSU (q. v.) used to control the armed forces of the 
Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact (q. v.) countries. An organ 
of the CPSU in the Ministry of Defense, it was responsible for 
conducting ideological indoctrination and propaganda activi- 
ties to prepare the armed forces for their role in national secu- 
rity. 

Marshall Plan — A plan announced in June 1947 by United States 
secretary of state George C. Marshall for the reconstruction 
of Europe after World War II. The plan involved a considera- 
ble amount of United States aid to Western Europe, but the 
Soviet Union refused the offer of aid and forbade the East Eu- 
ropean countries it dominated from taking part in the Mar- 
shall Plan. As a counterweight, the Soviet Union created the 
Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon — q.v.). 

Marxism/Marxist — The economic, political, and social theories of 
Karl Marx, a nineteenth-century German philosopher and so- 
cialist, especially his concept of socialism (q. v.), which includes 
the labor theory of value, dialectical materialism (q.v.), class 
struggle (q. v.), and the dictatorship of the proletariat (q. v. ) until 
a classless society can be established. Another German socialist, 
Friederich Engels, collaborated with Marx and was a major 
contributor to the development of Marxism. 



993 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Marxism-Leninism/Marxist-Leninist — The ideology of commu- 
nism (q.v.), developed by Karl Marx and refined and adapted 
to social and economic conditions in Russia by Lenin, that has 
guided the party and the Soviet Union. Marx talked of the es- 
tablishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat (q.v.), after 
the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, as a transitional socialist (q.v.) 
phase before the achievement of communism. Lenin added the 
idea of a communist party as the vanguard or leading force 
in promoting the proletarian revolution and building com- 
munism. Stalin and subsequent leaders contributed their own 
interpretations of the ideology. 

Menshevik — A member of a wing of the Russian Social Democratic 
Labor Party (q.v.) before and during the Russian revolutions 
of 1905 and 1917. Unlike the Bolsheviks (q.v.), the Menshe- 
viks believed in the gradual achievement of socialism (q. v. ) by 
parliamentary methods. The term Menshevik is derived from 
the word menshenstvo (minority). 

metropolitan — The primate of an ecclesiastical province of the Or- 
thodox Church. 

MGB (Ministerstvo gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti) — Ministry of 
State Security. The paramount security police organization 
from 1946 to 1953. 

military commissariat (voennyi komissariat — voenkomaf) — A local mili- 
tary administrative agency that prepares and executes plans 
for military mobilization, maintains records on military man- 
power and economic resources available to the armed forces, 
provides premilitary training, drafts men for military service, 
organizes reserves for training, and performs other military 
functions at the local level. 

mir — A peasant commune established at the village level in tsarist 
Russia. It controlled the redistribution of farmland and was 
held responsible for collecting taxes and levying recruits for mili- 
tary service. In Russian, mir also means "world" and "peace." 

Mongol "yoke" — Period of Mongol domination of much of eastern 
Europe by the Golden Horde (q.v.) from the mid-thirteenth 
century to the end of the fifteenth century. 

MOOP (Ministerstvo okhrany obshchestvennogo poriadka) — 
Ministry for the Preservation of Public Order. Functioned be- 
tween 1962 and 1968. 

moral-political capabilities — The ability of the people and the armed 
forces to assume a positive attitude toward a war fought by the 
Soviet Union and to support the political goals of the war under 
trying circumstances. 



994 



Glossary 



most-favored-nation status — Under the provisions of the General 
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT — q. v.), when one 
country accords another most-favored-nation status it agrees 
to extend that country the same trade concessions, e.g., lower 
tariffs or reduced nontariff barriers, that it grants to any other 
recipients having most-favored-nation status. As of May 1989, 
the Soviet Union had not been a member of GATT and had 
not received most-favored-nation status from the United States. 

mujahidin (sing., mujahid) — Derived from the word jihad, the term 
means holy warriors and is used by and applied to the Afghan 
resistance or freedom fighters. 

mullah — Muslim man trained in Islamic law and doctrine. 

Muscovy — The state that emerged around Moscow after the decline 
of Kievan Rus' (q.v.) in the thirteenth century. Predecessor 
to the Russian Empire (q.v.), which was proclaimed in 1721 
by Peter the Great. 

MVD (Ministerstvo vnutrennykh del) — Ministry of Internal Af- 
fairs. Existed from 1946 to 1962 and since 1968 began to exer- 
cise regular police functions. 

nationality — A people linked by a common language, culture, his- 
tory, and territory who may have developed a common eco- 
nomic and political life; an individual's ethnic background. Not 
to be confused with an individual's country of citizenship. 

Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact — Agreement signed by Nazi Ger- 
many and the Soviet Union on August 23, 1939, immediately 
preceding the German invasion of Poland, which began World 
War II. A secret protocol divided Poland between the two 
powers and gave Bessarabia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and 
the eastern part of Poland to the Soviet Union. The pact also 
delayed the Soviet Union's entry into World War II. Also 
known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. 

NEP (Novaia ekonomicheskaia politika) — New Economic Policy. 
Instituted in 1921 , it let peasants sell produce on an open market 
and permitted small enterprises (q.v.) to be privately owned 
and operated. Cultural restrictions were also relaxed during 
this period. NEP declined with the forced collectivization (q.v.) 
of farms and was officially ended by Stalin in December 1929. 

net material product — The official measure of the value of goods 
and services produced in the Soviet Union, and in other coun- 
tries having a planned economy, during a given period, usually 
a year. It approximates the term gross national product (GNP — 
q. v. ) used by economists in the United States and in other coun- 
tries having a market economy. The Soviet measure has been 



995 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

based on constant prices, which do not fully account for infla- 
tion, and has excluded depreciation. 

"new Soviet man" — A theoretical goal of several Soviet regimes 
to transform the culturally, ethnically, and linguistically diverse 
peoples of the Soviet Union into a single Soviet people, be- 
having according to the ideology of Marxism-Leninism (q. v.). 

"new thinking" — Gorbachev's view that international politics 
should be based on common moral and ethical norms rather 
than military force, including nuclear war; an integral part of 
perestroika (q.v.). 

NKGB (Narodnyi komissariat gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti) — 
People's Commissariat of State Security. Functioned in 1941 
and again from 1943 to 1946. 

NKVD (Narodnyi komissariat vnutrennykh del) — People's Com- 
missariat of Internal' Affairs. The commissariat that ad- 
ministered regular police organizations from 1917 to 1946. 
When the OGPU (q.v.) was abolished in 1934, the NKVD in- 
corporated the security police organization until 1946. 

nomenklatura — The CPSU's (q.v.) system of appointing key personnel 
in the government and other important organizations, based 
on lists of critical positions and people in political favor. Also 
refers to the individuals included on these lists. 

nonchernozem (nechernozem V) — A large agricultural and industrial 
region in the European part of the Soviet Union, extending 
approximately 2,300 kilometers from Kaliningrad in the north- 
west to Sverdlovsk in the east with a north- south expanse of 
more than 1,000 kilometers in places. The region does not have 
the black earth of the chernozem (q.v.) zone. 

Novosti (Agentstvo pechati novosti) — News Press Agency. The 
news agency responsible for disseminating Soviet information 
abroad. (The word novosV means news or something new.) 

nuclear war-fighting — The capability to use nuclear weapons to 
fight a war. 

oblast (pi., oblasts) — A territorial and administrative subdivision 
in ten of the fifteen union republics (q.v.). Directly subordinate 
to its union republic. See also autonomous oblast. 

OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Develop- 
ment) — Founded by Western nations in 1961 to stimulate eco- 
nomic progress and world trade. It also coordinated economic 
aid to less developed countries. In 1989 members included Aus- 
tralia, Austria, Belgium, Britain, Canada, Denmark, Finland, 
France, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, 
the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, 



996 



Glossary 



Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United States, and West 
Germany. 

OGPU (Ob"edinennoe gosudarstvennoe politicheskoe uprav- 
lenie) — Unified State Political Directorate. The security police 
from 1923 to 1934; successor to the GPU. 

Okhrana — The security police under Alexander III (1881-94). 
Covert operations (using nonuniformed agents and informers) 
were used to uncover and collect evidence against revolution- 
ary groups. 

okrug (pi., okruga) — See autonomous okrug. 

Old Believers — A sect of the Russian Orthodox Church that re- 
jected the changes made by Patriarch Nikon in the mid- 
seventeenth century. 

Old Church Slavonic (also known as Church Slavonic) — The first 
Slavic literary language. Influenced development of modern 
Slavic languages, especially literary Russian. Used in liturgies 
of the Russian Orthodox Church and other Slavic churches. 

opportunity cost — The value of goods or services in terms of what 
had to be sacrificed to obtain them. 

oprichnina — The era in the 1550s during which Ivan IV (the Terri- 
ble) brutally punished and decimated the boyar (q.v.) class. 

Pale of Settlement — A district created by Catherine II in 1792 for 
the Jewish population of the Russian Empire. By the nineteenth 
century, it encompassed all of Russian Poland, the Baltic 
provinces, Belorussia, most of Ukraine, Crimea, and Bessara- 
bia. Jews were prohibited from living or traveling beyond the 
Pale of Settlement. Although eventually some Jews were al- 
lowed to settle in other parts of the empire, the Russian cen- 
sus of 1897 indicated that nearly 5 million Jews remained in 
the Pale of Settlement and only about 200,000 lived outside 
its boundaries. 

party congress — In theory, the ruling body of the communist party. 
Party congresses, which usually met every five years, were 
largely ceremonial and legitimizing events at which several thou- 
sand ' 'elected' ' delegates convened to approve new party pro- 
grams (q.v.) and Party Rules (q.v.). 

party program — A comprehensive statement adopted by a party 
congress (q. v. ) that states the goals and principles of the party. 
The 1986 party program, the fourth since 1918, was adopted 
by the Twenty-Seventh Party Congress. It was notable in that 
it did not set definite dates for the attainment of goals, unlike 
its predecessor, the 1961 party program. 

Party Rules (Ustav kommunisticheskoi partii Sovetskogo Soiuza) — CPSU 
document containing regulations for admission of individuals 



997 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

into the CPSU (q. v.); the organizational structure of the party; 
the principles of democratic centralism (q.v.); the role of the 
primary party organization (q. v. ); the party's relations with the 
Komsomol (q. v.); party organizations in the armed forces; and 
membership dues. It can be altered by the party congress (q.v.). 
Also called Party Statute. 
passenger-kilometer — The movement of one person a distance of 
one kilometer. 

patriarch — Head of an independent Orthodox Church, such as the 
Russian Orthodox Church, or one of the Eastern Rite Catho- 
lic churches. 

peaceful coexistence — According to Marxism-Leninism (q.v.), the 
doctrine of maintaining proper state- to- state relations between 
socialist (q.v.) and capitalist states, while simultaneously en- 
couraging friction and strife within and among capitalist coun- 
tries by every means, short of all-out war, and pursuing 
expansionist aims in the Third World. 

people's court — An official tribunal having jurisdiction in most civil 
and criminal cases originating in a (raion) (q. v.). The court was 
presided over by a professional judge, assisted by two people's 
assessors (narodnye zasedateli), or lay judges. Cases were decided 
by a majority vote. Professional judges were elected for five- 
year terms and were members of the CPSU (q.v.); most had 
some legal training. People's assessors, who had no legal train- 
ing, were elected for two and one-half years but sat only for 
a few weeks; they corresponded somewhat to jurors in United 
States courts. 

perestroika (restructuring) — Gorbachev's campaign to revitalize the 
economy, party, and society by adjusting economic, political, 
and social mechanisms. Announced at Twenty- Seventh Party 
Congress in August 1986. 

permafrost — Ground permanendy frozen except for the surface soils 
that thaw when temperatures rise above freezing. Thawing and 
refreezing cause instability of the soil, which greatly compli- 
cates the construction and maintenance of roads, railroads, and 
buildings. Permafrost covers roughly the northern one-third 
of the Soviet landmass. 

permanent revolution — A theory, developed by Leon Trotsky, that 
in a backward society, such as that of Russia in the early 1900s, 
a bourgeois revolution would evolve into a proletarian, socialist 
(q. v. ) revolution and would inspire the continuous or perma- 
nent outbreak of socialist revolutions internationally. Continu- 
ing world revolution remained a doctrine of the CPSU (q. v. ) 
in the late 1980s. 



998 



Glossary 



Pioneer (Pioner) — A member of the Ail-Union Pioneer Organi- 
zation named for Lenin. Founded in 1922, and open to chil- 
dren ages ten to fifteen, the main purpose of the organization 
has been the rudimentary political indoctrination of Soviet 
youth. At age fourteen, a Pioneer can enter the Komsomol 
(q.v.). In 1980 about 20 million children were members of the 
Pioneer organization. 

Politburo — Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the CPSU 
(q.v.); the foremost policy-making body of the Soviet Union. 
In February 1989, the Politburo had twelve members and eight 
candidate members. From 1952 to 1966, the Politburo was 
called the Presidium. 

popular front — A device of Soviet foreign policy, implemented with 
the assistance of the Comintern (q.v.), that attempted to gain 
allies, principally the Western democracies, against the fascists 
in Spain, Germany, and elsewhere, from 1939 through World 
War II. 

Pravda (Truth) — Daily, nationwide newspaper published by the 

Central Committee of the CPSU (q.v.). 
Presidium (of the Central Committee of the CPSU)— The CPSU 

Politburo (q.v.) was called the Presidium between 1952 and 

1966. 

Presidium (of the Council of Ministers) — The executive commit- 
tee of the national executive branch of the government. 

Presidium (of the Supreme Soviet) — The executive committee of 
the national legislative branch of the government. 

primary party organization — The basic unit of the party, known 
as a party cell until 1934; comprised of three or more party 
members. Each party member is a member of a primary party 
organization. 

procurator — A member of the Procuracy whose responsibilities can 
include conducting investigations, supervising investigations 
carried out by the MVD (q.v.) and the KGB (q.v.), prosecut- 
ing criminal and civil offenders, referring judicial decisions to 
higher courts for review, supervising prisons, administering 
parole and release of prisoners, and overseeing the legality of 
operations of all government bodies. Procurators, who were 
appointed by the procurator general and served throughout the 
Soviet Union, were generally members of the CPSU (q. v. ) and 
subject to party discipline. During the tsarist period, Peter the 
Great appointed a chief procurator as head of the Holy Synod. 

proletarian internationalism — The Marxist belief that workers 
around the world are linked together by a bond that transcends 



999 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

nationalism; the commitment of communists to do all they can 
to convert the world to communism (q.v.). 

raion (pi., raiony) — A low-level territorial and administrative sub- 
division for rural and municipal administration. A rural raion 
was a county-sized district in a krai (q. v.), oblast (q. v.), autono- 
mous republic (q. v.), autonomous okrug (q. v.), or union republic 
(q.v.). A city raion was similar to a borough in some large ci- 
ties in the United States. 

readiness — The ability of military units to deploy to achieve a war- 
time objective without delay. According to Western authorities, 
divisions of the Soviet Ground Forces varied greatly in their read- 
iness and could be placed in three states of readiness. About 
40 percent of the divisions were in a high state of readiness with 
trained manpower at more than 50 percent of wartime authori- 
zation and with late-model weapons and equipment. About 50 
percent of the divisions were in a lower state of readiness with 
trained personnel at less than 50 percent authorization and with 
older weapons and equipment. (These divisions would require 
mobilization and training of reservists before being committed 
to combat.) About 10 percent of the divisions were essentially 
unmanned, inactive equipment sets that would require exten- 
sive time for mobilization and training before deployment. 

Red Army — The name for the Soviet army from 1918 until 1945. 

Red Terror — Initiated by the Bolsheviks (q. v.) after an August 1918 
attempt on Lenin's life. The bloody reign of the Vecheka (q. v.), 
during which the nation was ruthlessly subjugated to the Bol- 
shevik will. The Red Terror continued until 1920. 

rehabilitation/rehabilitated — Official restoration of a person or 
group of people sentenced and imprisoned or exiled for politi- 
cal crimes. 

repressed inflation — An economic situation in which government 
price controls restrict increases in prices but do not substan- 
tially decrease underlying causes of inflation. 

RSFSR (Rossiiskaia Sovetskaia Federativnaia Sotsialisticheskaia 
Respublika) — Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic; the 
Russian Republic. The largest of the fifteen union republics 
(q.v.), inhabited predominantly by Russians. It comprised ap- 
proximately 75 percent of the area of the Soviet Union, about 
62 percent of its population, and over 60. percent of its eco- 
nomic output. 

ruble — The monetary unit of the Soviet Union; divided into 100 
kopeks. The official Soviet exchange rate was 0.61 ruble per 
US$1 (1988 average). The black market rate varied from 4 to 



1000 



Glossary 



6 rubles per US$1 in 1988. The ruble has historically not been 
considered hard currency (q.v.). 
Rus' — See Kievan Rus'. 

Russian Empire — Successor state to Muscovy (q.v.). Formally 
proclaimed by Tsar Peter the Great in 1721 and significantly 
expanded during the reign of Catherine II, becoming a major 
multinational state. It collapsed during the revolutions of 1917. 

Russianization — The policy of several Soviet regimes promoting 
Russian as the national language of the Soviet Union. Rus- 
sian was given equal and official status with local languages 
in all non-Russian republics; it was made the official language 
of state and diplomatic affairs, in the armed forces, and on 
postage stamps, currency, and military and civilian decorations. 
A prerequisite for Russification (q.v.). 

Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (Rossiiskaia sotsial-demokra- 
ticheskaia rabochaia partiia) — A Marxist party founded in 1898 
that split into Bolshevik (majority) and Menshevik (minority) 
factions in 1903. The Bolsheviks changed the name of the party 
in March 1918 to the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik) 
and began calling themselves Communists. See also CPSU. 

Russification — A process of changing the national identity of non- 
Russians to an identity culturally similar to that of the Rus- 
sians. Although not the official policy of any Soviet regime, 
such assimilation often resulted from the policy of Russianiza- 
tion (q.v.), particularly in the case of Ukrainians, Belorussi- 
ans, and non-Russian educated elites. 

SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) — A series of negotiations 
between the Soviet Union and the United States that attempted 
to place limits and restraints on some of their central and most 
important armaments. The first series began in November 1969 
and culminated on May 26, 1972, when General Secretary 
Leonid Brezhnev and President Richard M. Nixon signed a 
treaty on the limitation of anti-ballistic missile systems (the 
ABM Treaty) and an interim agreement limiting strategic offen- 
sive arms. The second series began in November 1972 and 
resulted in a completed agreement, signed by General Secre- 
tary Brezhnev and President Jimmy Carter on June 18, 1979. 
Neither country, however, ratified the agreement. 

samizdat — Literally, self-publication. Russian word for the print- 
ing and circulating of literary, political, and other written 
manuscripts without passing them through the official censor, 
thus making them unauthorized and illegal. If published 
abroad, such publications are called tamizdat (q.v.). 



1001 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

samofinansirovanie — Literally, self-financing. A practice of some 
ministries enabling selected enterprises (q. v. ) to recover produc- 
tion costs and sufficient profits for investment. Without such 
financial autonomy, enterprises had to rely on funds allocated 
by central economic planners. 

sblizhenie — Literally, drawing together. A Soviet policy of bring- 
ing the diverse nationalities into a close socialist community 
by gradually reducing ethnic differences of individual nation- 
alities. The policy was included in the 1961 party program 
(q.v.). 

serf — A peasant legally bound to the land. Serfs were emancipated 
by Tsar Alexander II in 1861. 

Shia (or Shiite) — A member of the smaller of the two great divi- 
sions of Islam. The Shias supported the claims of Ali and his 
line to presumptive right to the caliphate and leadership of the 
world Muslim community, and on this issue they divided from 
the Sunnis (q. v. ) in the first great schism of Islam. Later schisms 
have produced further divisions among the Shias. In 1989 about 
10 percent of the Soviet Lfnion's Muslims were Shias. 

Slavophiles — Members of the Russian intelligentsia (q.v.) in the 
mid-nineteenth century who advocated Slavic, and specifically 
Russian, culture over western European culture, as opposed 
to Westernizers (q.v.). 

sliianie — Literally, blending, merging. A theory that all Soviet na- 
tionalities could be merged into one by eliminating ethnic iden- 
tity and national consciousness. Adopted by Stalin and included 
in the 1930 party program (q.v.), its intent was to achieve a 
single Russian-speaking, Soviet nationality. 

socialism/socialist — According to Marxism-Leninism (q.v.), the first 
phase of communism (q.v.). A transition from capitalism in 
which the means of production are state owned and whose guid- 
ing principle was "from each according to his abilities, to each 
according to his work. ' ' Soviet socialism bore scant resemblance 
to the democratic socialism of, for example, some West Euro- 
pean countries. 

socialist countries — As defined by the CPSU (q.v.), those coun- 
tries governed by a Marxist ideology. In May 1989, these in- 
cluded Bulgaria, Cambodia, China, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, the 
Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea), East 
Germany, Hungary, Laos, Madagascar, Mongolia, Nicaragua, 
Poland, the Soviet Union, and Vietnam. 

socialist internationalism — The linking of all socialist (q. v. ) coun- 
tries. See Brezhnev Doctrine; proletarian internationalism. 

socialist legality — A legal doctrine that ensured that the law and 



1002 



Glossary 



the legal system served the interests of the state and the re- 
gime rather than protecting individuals' rights vis-a-vis the state. 
Under Stalin, the doctrine was interpreted narrowly, with em- 
phasis on facilitating fulfillment of the economic five-year plans 
(q.v.). Under Khrushchev, and particularly under Gorbachev, 
emphasis was placed on codifying criminal and civil laws, es- 
tablishing and strengthening legal institutions, and adhering 
to laws and legal procedures. 

socialist property — According to a basic precept of socialism (q. v.), 
the state owns all land, resources, and the means of produc- 
tion in industry, construction, and agriculture, as well as the 
transportation and communication systems, banks, and trade 
enterprises (q.v.). In the Soviet Union, the CPSU (q. v.) con- 
trolled socialist property. 

socialist realism — An aesthetic doctrine that measured artistic and 
literary merit by the degree to which a work contributed to the 
building of socialism (q. v.) among the masses. 

soft-currency goods — Items that could be bought without the ex- 
penditure of hard currency (q.v.). 

soviet (sovet) — Literally, advice, counsel, or council. The basic 
governmental organ at all levels of the Soviet Union. 

sovkhoz (pi., sovkhozy) — See state farm. 

Spetsnaz (Voiska spetsial'nogo naznacheniia) — Special Purpose 
Forces of the Soviet armed forces or KGB (q. v. ), trained to at- 
tack important command, communications, and weapons 
centers behind enemy lines. 

sputnik — Literally, fellow traveler. A man-made spacecraft that or- 
bited the earth. In the West, the term Sputnik (capitalized) was 
used to refer to the first man-made earth satellite, which was 
launched by the Soviet Union in 1957 to the surprise of the 
Western scientific and defense communities. 

SSR (sovetskaia sotsialisticheskaia respublika) — Soviet socialist repub- 
lic. A soviet union republic (q.v.). 

Stakhanovite — A worker whose output was said to be well beyond 
production norms. Named for Aleksandr Stakhanov, an out- 
standing worker. The Stakhanovite movement began in Au- 
gust 1935. 

state farm (sovetskoe khoziaistvo — sovkhoz) — A government-owned 
and government-managed agricultural enterprise (q. v. ) where 
workers are paid salaries. 

steppe — The vast, semiarid, grass-covered plain in the southeastern 
portion of the European part of the Soviet Union. One of the 
five primary natural zones of the Soviet Union. 



1003 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Sufism — An Islamic movement that emphasizes a personal and 
mystical approach in the search for "divine truth." Sufism con- 
sists of semisecret Sufi brotherhoods, each pursuing a differ- 
ent school or "path" of mystic discipline but having a common 
goal. 

Sunni — A member of the larger of the two great divisions of Islam. 
The Sunnis, who rejected the claim of Ali's line, believe that 
they are the true followers of the sunna, the guide to proper 
behavior composed of the Quran and hadith, the precedent of 
Muhammad's words that serves as one of the sources of Islamic 
law. In 1989 about 90 percent of the Soviet Union's Muslims 
were Sunnis. 

Table of Ranks — A system of ranks for nobles based on service 
to the tsar rather than on birth or seniority. Created by Peter 
the Great in 1722. 

taiga — The extensive, sub- Arctic evergreen forest of the Soviet 
Union. The taiga, the largest of the five primary natural zones, 
lies south of the tundra (q.v.). 

tamizdat — Literally, published there (abroad). Russian word for 
samizdat (q. v. ) manuscripts surreptitiously sent abroad for pub- 
lication. 

TASS (Telegrafnoe agentstvo Sovetskogo Soiuza) — Telegraph 
Agency of the Soviet Union. The news agency that had a mo- 
nopoly on collecting and distributing news within the Soviet 
Union. 

territorial production complex (territorial' no proizvodstvennyi kom- 
pleks) — An economic entity consisting of various economically 
related industrial and agricultural enterprises (q. y.) in a par- 
ticular geographic area. 

Time of Troubles — Period of civil war in Muscovy between boyar 
(q.v.) factions from 1598 to 1613, with heavy Polish involvement. 

ton-kilometer — The movement of one ton of cargo a distance of 
one kilometer. Ton-kilometers are computed by multiplying 
the weight (in tons) of each shipment transported by the dis- 
tance hauled (in kilometers). 

tons originated — The weight of freight (in tons) at its original point 
of shipment. 

transmission belt — An organization, not formally part of the CPSU 
(q. v. ) apparatus, used by the party to convey its party program 
(q.v.) and propaganda to the population at large, for example, 
Soviet trade unions. 

Trans-Siberian Railway — The 7,000-kilometer railroad line, 
stretching from its western terminus at Chelyabinsk on the 
eastern slopes of the Ural Mountains to Vladivostok on the 



1004 



Glossary 



Pacific Ocean, was built between 1891 and 1916 to link the 
European part of Russia with Siberia and the Far East. In the 
late 1980s, the Trans-Siberian Railway informally consisted 
of several Soviet railroads that remained the only rail link be- 
tween the western part of the Soviet Union and the Soviet Far 
East until the BAM (q.v.) was opened in 1989. 
trust (trest) — An economic entity that consists of several industrial 
enterprises (q.v.) of the same type, e.g., construction trust, as- 
sembly trust. 

tundra — The treeless plain within the Arctic Circle that has low- 
growing vegetation and permanently frozen subsoil 
(permafrost — q.v.). The northernmost of the five primary na- 
tural zones of the Soviet Union. 

Turkestan — Literally, the land of the Turks. An immense, ancient 
territory in Central Asia stretching from the Caspian Sea in 
the west and extending into China's present-day Xinjiang 
Autonomous Region and northern Afghanistan in the east. In- 
cludes a large part of Kazakhstan (q.v.). 

turnover tax — A sales tax levied primarily on consumer goods. 

TVD (teatr voennykh deistvii) — Theater of military operations. A 
Soviet term meaning part of a continent or ocean within which 
are deployed strategic groupings of armed forces and within 
which military operations are conducted. 

Uniate Church — A branch of the Catholic Church that preserved 
the Eastern Rite and discipline but submitted to papal authority. 
Established in 1596 at the Union of Brest. In the Soviet Union, 
the Uniate Church is found primarily in the western Ukrain- 
ian Republic, where it has been referred to as the Ukrainian 
Catholic Church. Also known as the Greek Catholic Church 
or the Byzantine Rite Church. It is one of the Eastern Rite 
Catholic churches. 

Unified Electrical Power System (Ob"edinennaia elektroener- 
geticheskaia sistema) — The national electric power generating 
and transmission network of the Soviet Union. The system in- 
cludes over 90 percent of the country's generating capacity and 
is divided into regional power networks, each serving a single 
administrative or industrial area. It is linked to systems in Bul- 
garia, Finland, Norway, Poland, Romania, and Turkey. 

union republic — One of the fifteen primary administrative sub- 
divisions of the Soviet Union. Except for some of the smaller 
ones, the union republics were divided into oblasts (q.v.), au- 
tonomous oblasts (q.v.), kraia (q.v.), and autonomous repub- 
lics (q.v.) as major subdivisions. Also known as Soviet socialist 
republic (SSR — q.v.). 



1005 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



union-republic ministries — Ministries that had counterpart minis- 
tries in each of the republics. Other ministries of the central 
government were termed all-union ministries (q.v.). 

united front — A Leninist tactic used by the Soviet regime to au- 
thorize communist parties in other countries to collaborate 
temporarily with noncommunist parties. The purpose was the- 
oretically to promote democratic institutions and workers' 
rights, but in reality it provided opportunities for communists 
to secure political gains and to seize power without resorting 
to revolution. 

uskorenie (acceleration) — Under Gorbachev, an on-going effort to 
speed up the rate of growth and modernization of the economy. 

USSR — Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The Soviet Union. 

Varangians — A group of Norsemen who assumed control over com- 
munities of East Slavs (q.v.) ca. A.D. 860 and who founded 
the Rurikid Dynasty, which ruled for over 700 years. 

Vecheka (Vserossiiskaia chrezvychainaia komissiia po bor'be s 
kontrrevoliutsiei i sabotazhem — VChK) — All-Russian Extra- 
ordinary Commission for Combating Counterrevolution and 
Sabotage. The political police created by the Bolsheviks (q.v.) 
in 1917; supposed to be dissolved when the new regime, under 
Lenin, had defeated its enemies and secured its power. But 
the Vecheka, also known as the Cheka, continued until 1922, 
becoming the leading instrument of terror and oppression as 
well as the predecessor of other secret police organizations. 
Members of successor security organizations continued to be 
referred to as "Chekisty" in the late 1980s. 

virgin land campaign — An intensive but ultimately unsuccessful 
agricultural project directed by Nikita S. Khrushchev to raise 
crops in the vast grasslands of the Kazakh Republic and some 
neighboring areas of the Russian Republic that had never been 
farmed before. 

voenkomat — See military commissariat. 

Volga Germans — Ethnic Germans who had lived in the Volga River 
area for several centuries and who were moved eastward, mostly 
to the Kazakh Republic, en masse by Stalin on the suspicion 
of collaborating with the Germans during World War II. Re- 
habilitated (q.v.) in August 1965. 

war communism — Policy of the Bolshevik (q. v. ) regime during the 
Civil War (1918-21), in which the country's economy was 
almost totally directed toward equipping and maintaining the 
Red Army (q.v.). 

Warsaw Pact — Political-military alliance founded by the Soviet 
Union in 1955 as a counterweight to NATO. Members in 1989 



1006 



Glossary 



included Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, 
Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union. Served as the Soviet 
Union's primary mechanism for keeping political and military 
control over Eastern Europe. 

Westernizers — Russian intellectuals in the mid-nineteenth century 
who emphasized Russia's cultural ties with the West, as op- 
posed to the Slavophiles (q.v.). 

White armies — Various military forces that attempted to overthrow 
the Bolshevik (q.v.) regime during the Civil War (1918-21). 
The principal leaders of the White armies were former tsarist 
officers, including generals Anton Denikin, Nikolai Yudenich, 
Petr Wrangel, and Evgenii Miller and former tsarist admiral 
Aleksandr Kolchak. They operated with no unified command, 
no clear political goal, and no supplies from the Russian heart- 
land and thus were defeated piecemeal by the Red Army (q. v.). 

World Bank — Informal name used to designate a group of three 
affiliated international institutions — the International Bank for 
Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), the International 
Development Association (IDA), and the International Finance 
Corporation (IFC). The IBRD, established in 1945, has the 
primary purpose of providing loans to developing countries for 
productive projects. The IDA, a legally separate loan fund but 
administered by the staff of the IBRD, was set up in 1960 to 
furnish credits to the poorest developing countries on much eas- 
ier terms than those of conventional IBRD loans. The IFC, 
founded in 1956, supplements the activities of the IBRD 
through loans and assistance designed specifically to encourage 
the growth of productive private enterprises in the less devel- 
oped countries. The president and certain senior officers of the 
IBRD hold the same positions in the IFC. The three institu- 
tions are owned by the governments of the countries that sub- 
scribe their capital. To participate in the World Bank group, 
member states must first belong to the International Mone- 
tary Fund (IMF— q.v.). 

world socialist system — In the Soviet view, a commonwealth of ad- 
vanced socialist states that accept the Soviet model of govern- 
ment and interpretation of Marxism-Leninism (q.v.). 

Yalta Conference — Meeting of Stalin, Winston Churchill, and 
Franklin D. Roosevelt in February 1945 that redrew post- World 
War II national borders and established spheres of influence 
in Europe. 

Young Octobrists (Oktiabriata) — Literally, "Children of October." 
An organization that has prepared Soviet schoolchildren ages 
six to nine for membership in the Pioneer (q.v.) organization. 



1007 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 

Established in 1923, the first Young Octobrists were contem- 
poraries of the October Revolution of 1917 (Bolshevik 
Revolution — q. v.), hence the name ''Children of October." 
zampolit (zamestiteV komandira po politicheskoi chasti) — Deputy com- 
mander for political affairs. Found in each unit of the armed 
forces; responsible for overseeing the political reliability in the 
armed forces. 

zemskii sobor — A national assembly consisting of members of the 
duma (q.v.) of the boyars (q.v.), high church dignitaries, elected 
representatives of the nobility, the townspeople, and sometimes 
the peasants. Originally a consultative body in the mid-sixteenth 
century, this organization shared some minor governing func- 
tions with the tsars by the mid- seventeenth century but was 
not convened in the eighteenth century or subsequently. 

zemstvo — A rural, self-governing institution with jurisdiction over 
schools, public health, food supply, roads, insurance, relief for 
the poor, maintenance of prisons, and other local concerns. 
Existed from about 1864 until the Bolshevik Revolution (q.v.) 
in 1917. 

Zhdanovshchina — Literally, era of Zhdanov. A period from 1946 
to 1948 when Andrei Zhdanov, with Stalin's permission, led 
attacks on writers, musicians, and scientists for deviance from 
concepts approved by the CPSU (q.v.). Many attacks were 
made against persons of Jewish nationality (q.v.), who were 
termed "rootless cosmopolitans." Zhdanov died in 1948, but 
the purge continued. 



1008 



Index 



Abkhazian Autonomous Republic, 156 
abortion, lxvi; abolition of, 71; attitudes of non- 
Russian nationalities toward, 231; availabil- 
ity of, 266; as chief form of contraception, 
234; cost of, 234, 266; death from, 271; fac- 
tors contributing to rate of, 212; legality of, 
234, 235; in NEP era, 68; rates, 125, 234 
Abu Bakr, 194 
Abuladze, Tengiz, 392 
Academy of Fine Arts, 23 
Academy of Medical Sciences, 636 
Academy of Pedagogical Sciences, 253; facili- 
ties of, 248; mission of, 248-49; research and 
development in education by, 248 
Academy of Sciences, 645; absence of appropri- 
ate testing facilities, 639-40; achievements of, 
625; advice of, on policy, 335, 629; under 
Brezhnev, 627; censorship in, 376; charters of, 
624-65, 626; Engineering Sciences Division 
of, 626; financial decision by, 632; founded 
by Peter the Great, 22, 624; meetings of, 637; 
membership of, 636; military research and de- 
velopment under, 646-47; monitored by 
Science and Education Institutions Depart- 
ment, 628-29; in NEP era, 625; personnel 
policies, 636; purge of, 626; research of, 625, 
630, 635; research institutes under, 503, 636, 
639; research vessels of, 575-76; role of, 248, 
345, 461, 637; sections of, 636; under Sta- 
lin, 625-26; Western scientists in, 625 
Academy of Social Sciences, 321 
Acheson-Lilienthal-Baruch Plan, 442 
acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). 
See AIDS 

active measures: defined, 779; international front 

groups, 779; support for terrorists, 779 
Aden, Gulf of, 439 
Aden: Soviet military base in, 685 
Adler, 557 

Administration of Affairs Department (CPSU), 
300, 301 

Administrative Organs Department (CPSU), 
785 

Adzhar Autonomous Republic, 156 

Aeroflot. See civil aviation 

Afghanistan, 37, 38, 48, 101, 108, 160, 170, 
171, 414, 433-35, 446; bi-tarafi (balanced 
relationship) principle, 434; emigration of 
Kazakhs to, 164; emigration of Kirgiz to, 
167; history of Soviet involvement in, 
433-34; land of, appropriated by Soviet 
Union, 434; military advisers in, 684; mili- 
tary agreement of, with Czechoslovakia, 434; 



Soviet arms bought by, 614; Soviet forces 
stationed in, 728; Soviet occupation of, 
434-35; Soviet support for, lx; Soviet trade 
with, 612; ties to Comecon, 616, 855; treaty 
of, with Pakistan; treaties of, with Soviet 
Union; withdrawal of Soviet troops from, 
lxxvi, 430, 435, 604, 682, 684, 700 

Afghanistan, Soviet invasion of (1979), 56, 92, 
682-84, 700, 772, 781, 891; Airborne Troops 
in, 719; arguments for, 682; background of, 
434; condemned by Iraq, 431; decision for, 
408, 434; international response to, 91, 416, 
422, 427, 434, 443, 609, 683, 689; military 
airlifts into, 712, 721; as training for tactical 
conventional combat, 675, 683-84; United 
Nations condemnation of, 434, 445, 683 

Afghanistan, war in, 384; Afghan deaths from, 
435; Afghan refugees from, 435; helicopters 
in, 683; Muslims in, 747; Soviet weapons 
used in, 711 

Afghan-Soviet neutrality treaty (1931), 434 

Africa, 410; food imported from, 614; military 
advisers in, 684, 700; Soviet influence in, 
291, 872; Soviet trade with, 571, 615-16 

Africa, North, 569, 615 

Africa, sub-Saharan, 438-40, 684; economic 
assistance to, under Brezhnev, 438; Khru- 
shchev's efforts in, 438; military assistance 
to, 438; Soviet trade with, 615 

Afro- Asian People's Solidarity Organization, 
407 

After the Storm (Zalygin), 388-89 
Aganbegian, Abel, 480 

Age of Realism (literature), 38-40; "thick jour- 
nal" as outlet for literary opinion in, 39 

agitation and propaganda departments, 311 

agitprop, 377 

Agoniia (Klimov), 392 

Agrarian Policy Commission, 300, 522 

agricultural administration: bureaucracy of, 
dismantling of, 524; Gorbachev's approach 
to, 524; motivations of, 520; objectives of, 
520-21; under Stalin, 520 

Agricultural Construction, Ministry of, 524 

agricultural enterprises, 720 

Agricultural Plenum, 522, 524, 525 

agricultural policy: under Khrushchev, 522; 
results of, 521; under Stalin, 520 

agricultural production, 529-42; economic per- 
formance, 529-30; food production goals, 
524; growth of, 519, 530; improvement in, 
under Gorbachev, 530; problems with, under 
Gorbachev, lxii 



1009 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



agricultural products: causes of shortages of, 
519; cotton, 532; flax, 532; forage crops, 533; 
fruit, 534; grain harvests, 520; hemp, 532; 
import of, 602, 606, 608, 614; potatoes and 
vegetables, 533-34; shortages of, 519, 541; 
sugar beets, 532-33; sunflowers, 532; tea, 
534-36; technical crops, 532-33; tobacco, 
536; transportation of, hampered by poor 
roads, 545, 565; vegetables, 534, 541; wheats 
531 

agricultural sector, 452; collective farms in, 453, 
466-67; collectivization as dominant cause 
of poor performance of, 519-20; factors in 
poor performance of, 474-75; materials im- 
ported for, 615; planning in, 462; output of, 
453, 476; as source of capital accumulation, 
473; state farms in, 453, 466-67 

agricultural workers, 211; categories of, 217, 
226; children of, in higher education, 258; 
educational level of, 217; living standards of, 
520; income of, 217, 220, 520; increased par- 
ticipation of, in decision making, 524, 530; 
position of children of, 211; women as, 217 

agriculture, 457; agricultural land, 526; arable 
land, 526, 529; decrease in output during 
World War II, 77-78; forced collectivization 
of, lviii, 473, 520, 593, 758; grain as foun- 
dation of, 530-31; industrialization of, 226- 
27, 472; innovations in, 87-88; investments 
in, under Twelfth Five- Year Plan, 481 ; Khrush- 
chev's reforms in, 56, 87-88; as a net drain 
on the economy, 519; party influence in, lxix; 
problems in, under Brezhnev, 93, 477; prob- 
lems in, under Khrushchev, 93; problems in, 
under Stalin, 70; production in, 473, 476, 
478, 481; reform of, 524; reform of, resis- 
tance to, 520; underinvestment in, under 
Stalin, 529 

Agriculture, Ministry of, 524 

agro-industrial complex (APK), 524, 529-30 

Aguls, 159 

AIDS (SPID): accidental infection with, 272; 
advice regarding, 271; anti-AIDS Law, 272; 
compulsory testing for, 272; glasnost' regard- 
ing, 271; laws regarding, 272; number of 
cases, 272; public education about, 272; test- 
ing centers, 271-72; threat of the spread of, 
272 

Aigun, Treaty of (1858), 37 

Airborne Troops, lxxvi, 711, 712, 719-20; con- 
scripts in, 743; control of, 719; missions of, 
719-20; number of, 719; uniforms and rank 
insignia of, 738-39 

aircraft plants, 493; locations of, 493 

Air Defense Aviation, 711, 714; aircraft of, 714; 
mission of, 714 

Air Defense Forces (see also under name of 
branch), lxxvi, 676, 697, 712-16, 725; Air 
Defense Aviation, 714; Antiaircraft Rocket 



Troops, 712-14; background of, 712; general 
organization of, 703; missile and space 
defenses of, 714-16; mission of, 680-81; uni- 
forms and rank insignia of, 737-39 

Air Defense of Ground Forces, 708, 712; back- 
ground of, 708; equipment of, 708 

air fleet (Aeroflot), lxiii; civilian, 546; missions 
of, 546 

Air Forces (see also under name of branch), 
lxxvi, 672, 676, 677, 697, 725; Aeroflot work 
for, 580; in Afghan war, 711; aircraft of, 678; 
Frontal Aviation, 711; general organization 
of, 703; Military Transport Aviation, 
711-12; mission of, 678; as part of strategic 
nuclear forces, 678; role of, 678; Strategic 
Air Armies, 710-11; uniforms and rank in- 
signia of, 737-39; weapons of, 678 

AirLand Battle doctrine (United States), 680 

airports, 574 

Aitmatov, Chingiz, 388 

Akhmadulina, Bella, 389 

Akhmatova, Anna, 382 

Akhromeev, Sergei F., 663 

Aksionov, Vasilii, lxxii, 381 

Alaska, 29; Russian acquisition of, 27 

Albania, 86, 414; as member of Comecon, 601, 
854; as member of Warsaw Pact, 875, 884 

alcohol, availability of, 93, 121 

alcoholism (see also antialcohol campaign), lxvi; 
as contributor to death rate, 93, 100, 269; 
effect of, on divorce, 130, 270; incidence of, 
269; among Slavs, 269; treatment for, 270 

Aleksandra, 50, 57; execution of, 63 

Aleksandrov, Anatolii P., 637, 645 

Aleksandrov Gay, 561 

Alexander I, 27; acquisition of territory by, 28; 
alliance of, with Napoleon, 28; ascension to 
throne, 28; changes in government structure 
under, 28; defeat of Napoleon by, 29; focus 
of, on foreign affairs, 28; as monarch of Fin- 
land, 29; as monarch of Poland, 29; revolu- 
tionary movements under, 29-30 

Alexander II, 33-36, 179, 757; assassination 
of, 34, 36, 41; cultural reform under, 35; 
educational reform under, 35; emancipation 
of serfs by, 34; expansion of empire under, 
36-37; financial reform under, 35; foreign 
affairs of, after the Crimean War, 36-38; for- 
eign policy goals in East under, 38; foreign 
policy goals in Europe under, 37-38; judi- 
cial reform under, 34-35; military reform 
under, 35; Ottoman war under, 37-38; re- 
form of local government system by, 34; rise 
of Marxism under, 40-41; rise of revolution- 
ary populism under, 40-41 

Alexander HI, 34; attempted assassination of, 
41; industrialization under, 486; political 
reaction under, 36 

Alexander the Great, 160 



1010 



Index 



Alexiev, Alex, 685 
Alexis, 22 

Algeria, 582; privileged affiliation of, with Come- 
con, 616; Soviet trade with, 613, 614, 616 
Ali, 194 

Allende Gossens, Salvador, 440, 441 

Allied Control Commission, 877 

Allied Powers (World War I), 60; involvement 

of, in Russian Civil War, 61, 63 
Allied Powers (World War II), 80 
All-Russian Congress of Soviets, 332 
All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences, 

636 

All-Union Association for the Export and Im- 
port of Technical Equipment, 597 

All-Union Capital Investment Bank, 457 

All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions, 
228, 247, 276 

All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik) (see 
also Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik), 
Communist Party of the Soviet Union), 66, 
81 

All-Union Council of Evangelical Christian 
Baptists, 200 

All-Union Institute for Scientific and Techni- 
cal Information, 633 

Alma-Ata, 108, 166 

Alsace-Lorraine, 50 

Altai region, 497 

Alvarado, Juan Velasco, 441 

Amann, Ronald, 640 

Amanullah, 434 

Amin, Hafizullah, 434, 720 

Amu Darya, 527, 529 

Amur River, 37, 109, 426, 558 

Amur River Valley, 18, 37, 107, 529 

Andropov, Iurii V., lix, 304, 352, 417, 628; 
career of, 762; detente defined by, 419-20; 
economic reform under, lix, 467; as KGB 
chief, 95, 762, 777, 781, 782; KGB under, 
762-63; and letters to the editor, 379; loosen- 
ing of party strictures on media and the arts, 
lxxii, 372-73, 378, 383-84, 388 

Andrusovo, Treaty of (1667), 18 

Angola, 414, 430, 438-39, 446, 712; military 
advisers in, 684; Soviet arms bought by, 614; 
Soviet military aid to, 438-39, 684; Soviet 
military base in, 685; Soviet support for 
Cuban troops in, 684, 700; Soviet trade with, 
612; ties to Comecon, 616, 855; withdrawal 
by Soviet Union of support for Cuban mili- 
tary operation in, lx 

Anikiev, Anatolii, 785 

animal husbandry, 536-38; consumption of 
food from, 538; dairy farming, 536; distri- 
bution of, 536; food output per animal, 538; 
kinds of livestock, 536-38; reindeer herding, 
536 

Anna Karenina (Tolstoy), 40 



Antarctica, 442 

Anthem of the Soviet Union, 340 

Antiaircraft Rocket Troops, 712-14; organiza- 
tion of, 712; weapons of, 712 

antialcohol campaign, 272, 304, 479; reaction 
to, 270; reasons for, 121, 263, 270; results 
of, 270 

antiballistic missiles, 689 

Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty), 
416, 442-43, 686 

anti-Catholic campaign, 199-200 

Anti-Comintern Pact (1936), 73 

anticorruption campaign, 763 

anti-imperialism, 413 

anti-Jewish regulations, 179 

"anti-party group," 84 

antisatellite weapons (AS AT), 688-89 

anti-Semitism, 178, 180, 201; tolerated under 
Brezhnev, 90 

antismoking campaign, 270, 272 

antisubmarine warfare (ASW), 718 

apparatchiks, 297, 763 

"April Days," 58 

April Theses (Lenin), 58; popular response to, 

58, 59 
Arab Empire, 169 
Arabian Peninsula, 192 
Arabic, 166, 172 
Arab-Israeli conference, 432 
Arab-Israeli conflict, 91 
Arabs, 155, 160 

Aral region: as ecological disaster area, 115, 117 
Aral Sea, lxxiii, 113; diversion project, 113-15, 
529 

Archangel, 540 

Arctic Circle, 102, 506, 558 

Arctic Ocean, 101, 102, 104, 108, 109, 546, 

566, 569, 570, 572, 719 
Arctic region, 566 

Argentina, 441, 608; Soviet trade with, 612, 
615-16 

arid zone, 104, 110; agriculture in, 527; as cen- 
ter for space exploration, 107; described, 
107; irrigation in, 527 

Armaments, 702 

Armavir, 561 

armed forces, Soviet {see also under name of 
branch): combat experience of, 697-700; 
CPSU members in, 733; design bureaus of, 
735; external function of, 681, 682; Kom- 
somol members in, 733; lack of preparation 
of, for World War II, 74; life in, 745-46; 
limited effectiveness of, 697; loyalty of, to 
party lxxv; military districts, 725-27; minori- 
ties in, lxxvi, 746-47; missions of, troops in, 
lxxv, 697; number of, 697; occupation of 
Eastern Europe by, 79; organizational de- 
velopment of, 697-700; organization of, ter- 
ritorial, 723-28; organization of, typical 



1011 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



armed service, 706; overall mission of, 676; 
and the party, 728-33; party apparatus in, 
732; party control of, lxxv, 35-36; party in- 
fluence in, lxix, lxxiv, 24, 35; political direc- 
torates in, 731; political indoctrination in 
lxxv; political sections in, lxxv, 731; politi- 
cal training in, 731; problems in, 731-32; 
reaction of, to coup of 1991, lxxix; reorgani- 
zation of, 677; reserves, 750; role of, in coup 
of 1991, lxxx; special departments in, 
775-76; stationed abroad, 728; strategic 
leadership in, 700-703; strategic missions of, 
675-81; unilateral reductions in, 692; theo- 
retical basis for, lxxvi; victory requirement, 
685-86; women in, 747-48 

armed forces, uniforms and rank insignia, 
737-39; categories of, 737; coats, 737; colors 
of, 737, 738; components of, 737-38; shoul- 
der boards, 738-39 

Armenia, 50, 61 

Armenian Apostolic Church, 189 

Armenian Republic, lxx, 102, 115, 308; area 
of, 153; earthquake in, 384; establishment 
of, 61, 154, 362; legal age for marriage in, 
232; life expectancy in, 116; major cities in, 
154; nationalist demonstrations in, 202, 793; 
nationalities in, 154; population density, 124; 
territory of, 153; tree farms in, 475 

Armenians, lxvi, 27, 124, 153-55, 156, 158; 
alphabet of, 154; distribution of, 154; in 
higher education, 154; history of, 153; as 
members of CPSU, 155, 324; language of, 
154; national assertiveness by, 153, 154, 
201-2; persecution of, 153; population of, 
154; as scientific workers, 154; early socialist 
parties among, 42-43, 45; urbanization of, 
154 

arms control {see also nuclear disarmament), 
401, 608, 654; conventional, 691-93; for 
Lenin, 442; in foreign policy, 685; interme- 
diate-range nuclear forces, 689-91; and mili- 
tary objectives, 685-93; in military policy, 
685; nuclear, 442-45; objectives in, 685-86; 
proposals for, by Gorbachev, 444; threat re- 
duction, 690-91 

arms control, strategic, 676, 686-88; to avert 
world war, 686-87; defined, 686; motive for, 
687; to retain victory capability, 687-88 

art, 396-97; avant-garde, 397; censorship of, 
774; during NEP era, 67-68; under Nicho- 
las I, 31; schools of, 247, 257; socialist real- 
ism and, 397; survivalist, 397 

Artillery. See Rocket Troops and Artillery 

arts, the {see also under individual arts), 93-94, 
385-97; administration of, 373-77; under 
Brezhnev, 94; control of, 385, 388; control 
of, hindered by technological revolution, 369; 
critical realism in, 370; films, 370; history 
of party control of, 369; Leninist principles 



for, 371-72; literature, 370, 385; music, 370, 
394-96; party control of, 71-72, 370, 
373-74; politicization of, lxxii, 370-73; pro- 
test in, 369, 370, 397; revolution in, lxxii; 
role of, in influencing the population, 385; 
theater, 370; themes of, 370, 373 

asbestos, 112 

Ashkhabad, 172 

Asia, 410, 430, 433-37, 569, 700; destruction 
of targets in, 677; imperialism in, 44-45; 
Russian influence in, 44; Soviet goals in 
Southeast, 436-37; Soviet influence in, 291, 
872; Soviet objectives in, 433; Soviet trade 
with, 571, 615-16 

Asian collective security system, 426, 436 

Association of Southeast Asian Nations 
(ASEAN), 410, 437; Soviet ties with, 437; 
condemnation by, of Soviet invasion of Af- 
ghanistan, 434 

Astrakhan', 506 

Astrakhan' horde, 175 

Astrakhan' Khanate, 14, 175 

atheism, 184; in Marxism-Leninism, 198; num- 
ber of Soviets professing, 184 

Atlantic Ocean, 102, 540, 546, 566, 570 

atomic bomb, 627 

Austerlitz: Russian defeat by Napoleon at, 28 
Australia, 437, 571 ; Soviet trade with, 605, 606, 
608 

Austria {see also Austria-Hungary), 24, 32, 36; 
as importer of Soviet gas, 508, 581, 609; as 
member of Quadruple Alliance, 29; perma- 
nent neutrality for, 85; Russian alliance with, 
23; Russian alliance with, against Napoleon, 
28 

Austria-Hungary, 37, 42, 47, 142; ambitions 
of, in Balkans, 37, 38, 48; annexation of Bos- 
nia and Hercegovina by, 48-49; territory 
gained from, by Russia, 50; western Ukraine 
incorporated into, 141, 190; in World War I, 
49 

"autocracy, Orthodoxy, and nationality" prin- 
ciple, 30 

autocracy, Russian, 15, 27; defined, 3; efforts 
at restricting, 15; and inability to develop 
constitutional government, 47; legacy of, lvii; 
Marxism adapted to, 282, 283, 284; under 
Nicholas I, 30; origins of, 3; Radishchev's 
attack on, 26; subordination of people to, 17 

autocrat, defined, 13 

automation, 455; importance of, in industry, 
485, 499; in metallurgy industry, 496-97; 
self-sufficiency in, for Comecon, 603; work- 
ers' ability to deal with, 490 

automobiles, 545, 561; importance of, to local 
transportation systems, 561; number of, lxiii, 
566 

Automotive and Agricultural Machine Build- 
ing, Ministry of, 493, 646, 735 



1012 



Index 



automotive industry, 497-98; facilities in, 
497-98; goals of, 498; growth of, 498; pro- 
duction ratio of automobiles to trucks, 497; 
technology transfer to, 644; truck planning 
in, 498 

automotive transportation {see also roads and 
under individual means of transport), 545, 
561-66; automobiles, 545, 561; buses, 545, 
561; development of, 561-65; origins of, 561; 
problems in, 561-62; trucks, 545, 561 

Automotive Troops, 721 

autonomous oblasts, 102, 137, 139, 153, 156, 
184, 195, 311, 353, 364, 374; defined, 361- 
62 

autonomous okruga, 102, 137, 139, 153, 184, 
195, 353, 364, 374; defined, 361-62 

autonomous republics, 102, 137, 139, 153, 156, 
184, 293, 353, 364, 374; defined, 361-62; 
food program in, 524; planning in, 464 

Avars, 5, 159, 194 

Aviation Industry, Ministry of the, 496, 646 
Awakum, 19 

Azerbaydzhan, 61, 157; influx of Slavs into, 157 

Azerbaydzhanis, lxvi, 153, 156-59; alphabet 
of, 158; characteristics of, 158; distribution 
of, 158; in higher education, 159; history of, 
156-58; Iranian, 158; Islamic faction, 157- 
58, 194; language of, 158-59; and literacy, 
158; Marxist faction, 157; as members of 
CPSU, 159; national resurgence of, 157-58; 
population of, 158; repression of, 158; as 
scientific workers, 159; urbanization of, 159 

Azerbaydzhan Republic, 61, 102, 154, 362; 
agriculture in, 534-36; cities in, 159; cotton 
grown in, 532; mosques in, 200-201; nation- 
alist demonstrations in, 793; rate of premar- 
ital pregnancy in, 234; tree farms in, 475 

Azov, Port of, 20, 21, 23 

Azov, Sea of, 20, 113, 567, 572 



Bab al Mandab, Strait of, 439 

backwardness, 3-4, 27, 41; innovation as reac- 
tion to, 640; manifested in Crimean War, 
34; of military, 34, 35-36; Peter the Great's 
efforts to reverse, 22; technology acquisition 
to overcome, 642 

Baghdad Pact {see also CENTO), 431 

Bahrain, 432 

Bakatin, Vadim V., lxxx, 783-85 
Baku, 157, 158, 159, 201, 503, 547; oil pipe- 
lines in, 580, 581; Russian acquisition of, 29, 
157 

Bakunin, Mikhail, 40 
balance of payments, 595, 645 
Balkan policy, 48-49 

Balkans, 74; crisis in, 36, 49; international al- 
liances regarding, 49; nuclear-free zone, 691; 



revolutionary movements in, 42; rivalry be- 
tween Austria-Hungary and Russia in, 48; 
Russian ambitions in, 37, 45; Russian in- 
fluence over, 24, 32; after Treaty of San 
Stefano, 38 

ballet: under Nicholas 1,31; schools of, 247, 257 

Baltic Fleet, 697, 727 

Baltic nationalities, 138, 146-52, 156; charac- 
teristics and experiences of, 146-47; German 
and Polish influences on, 147; national as- 
sertiveness by, 201-2 

Baltic Sea, 5, 8, 10, 12, 14, 21, 50, 139, 150, 
423, 525, 566, 566, 570, 571, 580, 719; auto- 
mobile ferry on, 575; oil reserves in, 506 

Baltic states, 25, 61, 178; climate of, 110; estab- 
lishment of independence, 61; industrializa- 
tion of agriculture in, 227; nationalist 
demonstrations in, 201-2; Soviet occupation 
of, 699 

Baltic tribes, 145 

Baltic-White Sea canal, 566 

Baluchi, 194 

Bamovskaya, 558 

Bangladesh, 436 

banking, 469; checking accounts, 458; indus- 
try, 452; nationalization of, 472; personal 
savings accounts, 458 

Baptists, 184, 191 

Barannikov, Viktor, lxxx 

barges, 545 

Barghorn, Frederick C, 322 

Bashkir Autonomous Republic, 176, 181, 182 

Bashkirs, 152, 176, 182-83; alphabet of, 182; 
history of, 182; language of, 182; nationalist 
movement, 182; population of, 182; urbani- 
zation of, 182-83 

Basic Directions for the Economic and Social Develop- 
ment of the USSR for 1986-1990 and for the Peri- 
od to the Year 2000, 451, 478, 525, 540 

Basic Principles of Operational Art and Tactics (Sav- 
kin), 658 

Basic Principles of the International Socialist Divi- 
sion of Labor, 860, 861 

Basic Provisions for Fundamentally Reorganizing Eco- 
nomic Management, 468; described, 468; re- 
form of price structure in, 470 

Basmachi, 170, 434 

Basmachi Rebellion, 162, 168, 170, 171, 172 

Basov, Nikolai, 623 

Batista, Fulgencio, 440 

Battle of Stalingrad, 56 

Baykal, Lake, 107, 109, 113, 489, 557 

Baykal-Amur Main Line (BAM), 124, 489, 
539, 557-58, 721; area serviced by, 558; con- 
struction challenges, 557-58; extension of, 
558; freight traffic on, 558; Litde BAM, 558; 
mean annual temperature along, 558; open- 
ing of, 557 

Beijing, Treaty of (1860), 37 



1013 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Belarus tractors, 606 

Belgium, 49, 581 

Belianiv, Nikolai, 397 

Belinskii, Vissarion, 38, 371 

Belorussia, 5, 10, 12, 24, 30, 42, 145, 178; eco- 
nomic region, 503; Polish influence in, 145; 
Soviet republic established in, 61 

Belorussian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, 
199 

Belorussian Democratic Republic, 145 

Belorussian Military District, 890 

Belorussian offensive, 552 

Belorussian Republic, 5, 64, 102, 123, 147, 
154, 188, 254, 412, 526; agriculture in, 533; 
candidates for Congress of People's Deputies, 
347; depopulation in, 127; drainage projects 
in, 529; establishment of, 145; families in, 
236; Jewish community in, 178, 180; major 
cities in, 146; nationalities in, 146; party ap- 
paratus in, 307, 308; Roman Catholic com- 
munity in, 190 

Belorussians, 3, 5, 8, 24, 27, 138, 144-46; al- 
phabet of, 145; higher education of, 146; his- 
tory of, 144-45; independence movement, 
145; language of, 145-46; as members of 
Central Committee, 146; as members of 
CPSU, 146, 323, 324; nationalist movement 
among, 205; persecution of, 145; Poloniza- 
tion of, 145; population, 145; as scientific 
workers, 146; urbanization of, 146 

benefits, 222-23, 471; allocation of housing, 
222-23; maternity, 234, 243, 276; perqui- 
sites, 222; of social position, 219-24 

Benin: priviliged affiliation of, with Comecon, 
616 

Berbera, 684 

Berezovka, 511 

Beria, Lavrenty, 81, 156, 392, 761; coup plot- 
ted by, 82; execution of, 82, 760; expansion 
of police authority under, 759; power of, 760 

Bering Strait, 101, 102, 104 

Berkakit, 558 

Berlin, 88; airlift, 80; blockade, 80; building 
of Wall in, 87; division of, 80; East, 663; 
Soviet invasion of, 75, 699 

Bertsch, Gary K., 643 

Bessarabia, 179; annexation of, lviii, 74, 474; 

ceded to Russia, 174; seized by Russia, 28, 

36, 363; Russification of, 174 
Bialer, Seweryn, 289, 305, 775 
Big Diomede Island (Ratmanova Island), 101 
bilateral trade agreements: described, 611; with 

Finland, 605, 611; with the Third World, 

613 

Biriukova, Aleksandra P., 346 
Birmingham, University of, 640 
birthrates, 122, 123, 125, 127; and population 

problems, 125 
Bismarck, Otto von, 32, 38; dismissal of, 38 



Bisti, Dmitrii, 397 
Black Repartition, 41 

Black Sea, 5, 7, 12, 24, 26, 36, 50, 100, 107, 
139, 178, 525, 527, 534, 567, 570, 719; oil 
reserves in, 506; remilitarization of, 37 

Black Sea Fleet, 727 

Mat (influence), lvi, 222 

"Bloody Sunday," 45 

Bogoliubskii, Prince Andrei, 8-9 

Bolshevik Central Committee, 59, 60, 371 

Bolshevik Revolution (1917), 55, 59-61, 147, 
392, 554, 737; economic change following, 
213; impact of, on diplomatic affairs, 409; 
impact of, on population, 118; initial phase 
of, 59; social change following, 213; solidifi- 
cation of power after, 60; taught for politi- 
cal indoctrination, 253; women in, 747 

Bolsheviks (see also Communists), 43, 44, 55, 
58, 63, 135, 139, 162, 176, 179, 182, 188, 
189, 369, 624, 661; Belorussian, 145; criti- 
cal realism used by, 370, 371; as constitu- 
tional rulers of Russia, 332; coup by, in 
Georgia, 155; increase in power of, 59; na- 
tionalization of industry under, 487; out- 
lawed by Provisional Government, 59; 
overthrow of Provisional Government by, 
lvii; popular uprisings in support of, 58, 59, 
60; and World War I, 60 

Bolshoi Theater, 393 

Bolvanskiy Nos, 558 

Border Troops, lxxvi, 697, 722, 733, 756, 
791-93; administration of, 769; conscription 
of, 791; Dzerzhinskii Higher Border Com- 
mand School, 792; equipment of, 723; 
Higher Border School, 792; Maritime, 723; 
mission of, 723, 791-92; number of, 723, 
791; organization of, 725; Political Direc- 
torate of, 793; political training and indoc- 
trination, 793; schools, 792; training, 792- 
93; uniforms and rank insignia of, 739; 
Voroshilov Higher Border Military- Political 
Academy, 792; in World War II, 723 

Border Troops Directorate, 769, 791; intelli- 
gence administration, 791; organization of, 
792 

border zone, 792 

Boris Godunov (Liubimov), 394 

Bosnia, 37 

Bosporus, 28, 32, 48, 50 
botanical gardens, 636 
Botswana, 438 
bourgeoisie: increase in, 42 
Boxer Rebellion, 44 
boyars, 13, 14 
Brandenburg, 20 
Brandt, Willy, 421 
Bratsk, 511 
Brazil, 441, 614 
Brecht, Berthold, 394 



1014 



Index 



Breslauer, George, 303, 304 
Brest, 581 

Brest-Litovsk, Treaty of, 61, 150; repudiated, 
61 

Brezhnev, Leonid I., 56, 88, 91, 299, 305, 315, 
352, 372, 394, 407, 436, 440, 476, 531, 756; 
agriculture under, 93, 524, 529, 533; as- 
sistance to Africa under, 438; attempt by, 
to improve Sino-Soviet relations, 426, 427; 
background of, 89; as chairman of Presid- 
ium, 89-90; conservative policies under, 89, 
371; consolidation of power by, 89, 425, 762; 
cult of, 94, 291 ; death of, 56, 94-95; detente 
under, lix; economy under, lix, 466, 467; as 
first secretary, 89; Food Program of, 524; 
ill health of, 94-95; KGB under, 762-63, 
772; and letters to the editor, 379; literature 
under, 388; military-political relations under, 
729; nationalities under, 197; nuclear war 
viewed by, 656-57; patronage systems under, 
219, 315-16; police under, 782; religion 
under, 200; SALT II signed by, 687; science 
and technology under, 627-28; standard of 
living under, 93; status of KGB under, 762; 
treaties signed by, 92 

Brezhnev Doctrine, 423-24, 682, 683, 884; de- 
fined, 90; repudiated by Gorbachev, 424 

Britain, 20, 44, 50, 56, 73, 78, 87, 172, 593; 
acquiescence of, to Hider's demands, 73; as- 
sistance of, to Soviet Union in World War 
II, 75; concerns of, regarding Russian ex- 
pansionism, 38, 44, 49; contributions of, to 
Soviet chemical industry, 503; after Crimean 
War, 36; in Crimean War, 32; declaration 
of war on Germany, 73; diplomatic recog- 
nition by, of Soviet Union, 67, 412, 421; 
diplomatic support of, for Iran, 79; estab- 
lishing relations with Japan, 37; Gorbachev's 
1984 visit to, 357, 42; influence of, in Mid- 
dle East, 430, 434; involvement of, in Rus- 
sian Civil War, 61, 63; Limited Test Ban 
Treaty signed, 688; as member of Quadruple 
Alliance, 29; as member of United Nations, 
445; nuclear forces of, 417, 421, 444, 690; 
percentage of GNP spent on health care in, 
273; relations of, with Soviet Union, 421-22; 
Russian alliance against, with Napoleon, 28; 
Russian dealings with, 48; ships acquired 
from, 575; Soviet alliance with, in World 
War II, 76-77; trade boycott of Soviet Union 
by, 601 

British Broadcasting Corporation, 382 

British Communist Party, 422 

Brodsky, Joseph, lxxii 

Brothers Karamazov, The (Dostoevskii), 40 

Bucharest formula, 865 

Buddhism, 184 

budget: for influencing the economy, 469; kinds 
of, 469; method of distributing funds from, 



469; for 1985, primary expenditures in, 469 
Bug River, 5 

Bukhara, 160, 161, 169, 170, 434 

Bukharin, Nikolai I., 44, 65, 66, 70; demotion 
of, by Stalin, 68; in show trials, 70; support 
of, for Stalin, 66 

Bukovina, Soviet invasion of, 74 

Bulgakov, Mikhail, 394 

Bulganin, Nikolai A., 82, 84 

Bulgaria, 38, 49, 407, 414, 423, 425, 474, 552, 
575, 877, 883, 890; intelligence gathering by, 
780; labor transfers from, 870; as member 
of Comecon, 601 , 854; military advisers in, 
684; occupation of, by Red Army, 877; satel- 
lite communications hookup to, 582; Soviet 
treaty with, 877 

Bulgarians, 138, 146 

Bulgars, 175, 181 

Bund (Jewish socialist party), 42 

burany (blizzards), 110 

Bure, R., 253 

Bureya River Valley, 529 

burghers: legal status of, 17 

Burma, 616 

Buryats, 184 

buses, 545, 561, 565-66; average distance 
traveled, 566; importance of, to local trans- 
portation systems, 561, 565; passengers on, 
561, 566 

Bush, George H.W., lx 

Byzantine culture, 3, 4, 7, 10 

Byzantine Empire, 3, 5, 186; influence of, 13 



Cabinet of Ministers, lxxii 
cadres, 89, 260, 296, 307, 629; specialist, 308-9 
Cadres Abroad Department (CPSU), 404, 407 
Cambodia, 407, 426, 427, 446; satellite com- 
munications hookup to, 582; Soviet eco- 
nomic relations with, 601, 605, 612; Soviet 
military aid to, 684; Vietnamese occupation 
of, 437, 445-46; withdrawal of Vietnamese 
troops from, 604 
Campbell, Robert, 779 

Cam Ranh Bay, 437; Soviet military base in, 

685, 727-28 
Canada, 526, 548, 606; Soviet trade with, 605, 

606, 608 

canals: amount of freight carried on, 566; con- 
struction of, using prisoners, 566, 567; 
kilometers of, 566 

capitalist-oriented states, 428 

cardiovascular disease, 269, 271 

Carpathian Mountains, 5, 107, 108, 581 

Carter, Jimmy, 92, 687 

Caspian Flotilla, 727 

Caspian Sea, 10, 99, 107, 109, 113, 160, 502, 
527, 567, 572, 719; ferry line on, 575; oil 
reserves in, 506 



1015 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Castro, Fidel, 440 
Catherine I, 23 

Catherine II (the Great), 24-27, 28; Charter 
of Nobility issued by, 26; Charter to the 
Towns issued by, 26; death of, 27; expan- 
sion of Russian Empire under, 24-25; gov- 
ernment reforms under, 25; "Greek project" 
of, 24; legacy of, 26; organization of society 
into estates by, 26, 27; overthrow of Peter 
III by, 23; Poland partitioned by, 24, 141; 
reorganization of provincial administration 
by, 26; Ukrainians enserfed by, 141 

Catholic Church, Soviet policies toward, 199- 
200 

Catholicism, 145, 147, 178, 184 

Catholics, 149, 189-90; Lithuanian, 199-200, 

202; Roman, 190; persecution of, 148; 

Ukrainian, 190, 199-200 
cattle, 536 

Caucasus Mountain Pass Railroad, 561 
Caucasus Mountains, 99, 107-8, 153, 159, 561 
Caucasus Railroad, 547 
Caucasus region, 5, 12, 29, 61, 102, 108, 110, 
124, 534; agriculture in, 532, 536; climate 
of, 112; family in, 230, 236, 238; famine in, 
196; gender relations in, 230; increase of in- 
fectious diseases in, 270; industrialization of 
agriculture in, 227; introduction of Islam 
into, 192; metal industry in, 502; mother- 
hood medals in, 236; nationalities in, 138, 
152-59; oil pipelines in, 581; patronage sys- 
tems in, 219; railroad construction in, 558, 
561; unofficial income in, 221-22 
Ceausescu, Nicolae, 884, 889 
censorship, 369, 370, 372, 373, 382, 397; 
abolished, lxxiv; of art, 397; by Glavlit, 373, 
774; by Glavrepertkom, 391; government in- 
stitutions involved in, 373; government role 
in, 374-76; hierarchy, 375; by KGB, 376, 
774; loosening of, 390; of military and scien- 
tific information, 376; of music, 396; of peri- 
odicals, 381; policies, 375; topics of, 376 
Censor's Index: contents of, 374-75; KGB work 

on, 774; size of, 374 
census, 115-16; 1940, 119; 1959, 119; 1979, 

127; 1989, 116 
CENTO. See Central Treaty Organization 
Central Asia, 14, 121, 124, 171, 172; Muslims 
in, 194; nationalities in, 138, 159-60; patron- 
age systems in, 219 
Central Asian Military District, 725 
Central Asian Power System, 511 
Central Auditing Commission, 292, 298, 730 
Central Committee (CPSU), 65, 84, 88, 95, 
276, 281, 296, 299, 301, 303, 309, 315, 340, 
346, 348, 392, 404, 479, 522, 597, 600, 640; 
apparatchiks in, 297; armed forces under, 



700; authority of, delegated, 296; censorship 
under, 774; criticism in, 319; departments 
of, responsible for foreign policy, 404-7; 
described, 292; duties of, 296; election of 
members of, 295; functions of, 298; history 
of, 296-98; KGB under, 770; meetings of, 
296; members of, 297, 634, 730, 785; mem- 
bership of, 298; membership of, selection 
process for, 297; military representation in, 
297; Ministry of Defense and, 702; planning 
function of, 460-61; as policy maker, 628- 
29; role of, in education, 247; stability in, 
under Brezhnev, 89; turnover in, 297, 303; 
turnover in, under Gorbachev, 297-98; 
uchraspredy of, 314; worker and peasant rep- 
resentation in, 297 

Central Europe, 664, 691 

Central Executive Committee, 332; presidium 
of, 333; Soviets of, 333 

Central Group of Forces, 883 

centralized planning {see also under types of 
planning), lix: advantages of, 462-64; com- 
mittees involved in, 461; defined, 451, 
458-60; in metallurgy, 500; problems in, 
491; reasons for, 472-73; reassessment of, 
487; for science and technology, 630 

Central Kazakhstan Railroad, 547 

Central Siberian Plain, 104 

Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) (see also 
Baghdad Pact), 431 

Chad, 420 

Chamber of Commerce and Industry, 597, 600 

Chardzhou, 172 

Charles XII, 20 

Charter of Nobility, 26 

Charter to the Towns, 26 

Chazov, Evgenii, 269, 273 

Cheboksary, 181 

Chebrikov, Viktor M., 346, 762, 764, 781; ac- 
knowledgment of KGB abuses, 764, 765; 
ouster of, from KGB, 765 

Chechen-Ingush, 184 

Chekhov, Anton, 40 

Chelyabinsk, 124, 497, 501 

chemical industry, 476, 502-3; long-term goals 
of, 502, 503; major divisions of, 502; petro- 
chemicals, 502-3; planning goals of, 503; 
plastics, 502; role of, in technological ad- 
vancement, 503; technology transfer to, 644 

Chemical Industry, Ministry of the, 646 

Chemical Troops, 708-10; equipment of, 709- 
10; mission of, 709; number of, 709; organi- 
zation of, 708-9 

Cherepovets, 124 

Chernavin, Vladimir, 678 

Chernenko, Konstantin U., lix, 94-95, 290, 
305, 417, 467, 627; literature under, 388-89; 
loosening of party strictures on media and 
the arts, 372-73, 379 



1016 



Index 



Chernichenko, Iurii, 389 

Chernobyl' nuclear accident, lxxiii, 115, 262, 

384, 481, 512, 710 
chernozem soil, 107, 526, 527, 533 
Chernyshevskii, Nikolai, 40, 371 
Cherry Orchard, The (Chekhov), 40 
Chiang Kai-shek, 67 
Chicherin, Georgii, 67 

children: care of, 251; custody of, 235; deaths 
of, due to medical negligence, 271; health 
care of, 265, 266; illegitimate, 235 

Children of the Arbat (Rybakov), 390 

Chile, 413, 440, 441; Soviet assistance to, 440 

China (see also Sino-Soviet relations), 50, 56, 
88, 99, 101, 108, 109, 116, 160, 164, 167, 
176, 194, 413, 414, 428, 433, 436, 705; 
Boxer Rebellion in, 44; Communist victory 
over Nationalists in, 80-81; discontent of, 
with Soviet leadership, 86; exports of, 604; 
foreign currency reserves of, 604; foreign 
trade deficits of, 604; French arms sold to, 
420; incursion into Vietnam, 426; involve- 
ment of, in Korean War, 81; Japanese vic- 
tory over, 44; as member of United Nations, 
445; Soviet attempt to undermine influence 
of, 90, 436; Soviet foreign policy toward, 
under Khrushchev, 56; Soviet foreign pol- 
icy toward, under Lenin, 67; Soviet trade 
with, 591, 54, 601, 604-5, 608; Soviet troops 
on border with, 604, 725; summit of, pro- 
posed with Soviet Union, 427; withdrawal 
of, from Comecon, 604 

Chinese Communist Party, 67, 86, 426 

Chinese Empire, 18, 41 

Chinggis Khan, 155 

Christianity, 3, 149, 151, 179; introduction of, 

to Kievan Rus', 7, 138, 205 
Christians, 153, 159 

Chronicle of the Catholic Church in Lithuania, 190 

Chu River, 527 

Churbanov, Iurii, 782 

Churchill, Winston, 77 

Church Slavonic. See Old Church Slavonic 

Chuvash, 152, 181, 182; alphabet of, 181; his- 
tory of, 181; language of, 181; population 
of, 181; religion of, 181; urbanization of, 181 

Chuvash Autonomous Oblast, 181 

Chuvash Autonomous Republic, 181 

citizenship, 339; duties of, 339 

civil aviation (Aeroflot), 576-80; adaptation of 
aircraft in, 578-579; cargo transportation, 
576; domestic flights, 578-80; evolution of, 
579; fuel shortage, 578-80; helicopters in, 
578; jets in, 579; kinds of aircraft operated 
by, 579; number of passengers served, 578; 
operations of, 579-80; passenger transpor- 
tation, 576-79; rapid growth of, 579; tech- 
nology in, 579; unusual services performed 
by, 578-579; work of, for Soviet armed 



forces, 580, 712; in World War II, 579 
Civil Aviation, Ministry of, 580, 712 
civil defense, 676, 702, 721-22; mission of, 681; 
number of personnel, 722; origin of, 721; 
purpose of, 721-22 
Civil War, lvii, 55, 61-64, 100, 139, 147, 164, 
179, 182, 290, 472, 487, 661, 758; Allied 
Powers' involvement in, 61, 63; armed forces 
in, 698; Communist triumph in, 62; effect 
of, on family, 235; foreign trade during, 593; 
non-Russian nationalities during, 64; origins 
of, 61; party controls over science during, 
633; relations with Japan during, 428; 
repression of opponents in, 63; role of rail- 
roads in, 547; women in, 747 
Civil War in France, 1848-1850, The (Marx), 332 
class conflict, 214-15 
class struggle, 402 
Clausewitz, Carl von, lxxvi, 655 
clergy: persecution of, under Stalin, 72 
climate, 109-12, 122; cold weather, effects of, 
109-12; diversity of, 112; dominance of 
winter, 1 10; influence of, on agriculture, 526; 
monsoonal, 112; precipitation levels, 112, 
526; of Soviet Asia, 489; temperate zone, 
110; temperatures, 110, 489; in Transbaykal 
area, 558; weather patterns, 110 
clinics (see also health care, hospitals, polyclinic 

complexes), 263 
coal, lxxvii, 112, 476, 486, 489, 508-9, 510; 
export of, 508; location of, 508; mining, 509, 
611; obstacles to access to, 488; production 
growth, 509; quality, 50; reserves of, 509; 
source of, 508; transportation of, 509; uses 
of, 505, 508; yield, 509 
Coastal Defense Forces, 719; focus of, 719 
Coastal Rocket and Artillery Troops, 719, 727 
Cold War, 56, 78-81, 382; declaration of, lvii; 
defined, 79; end of, Ix; establishment of 
diplomatic relations during, 412; as reaction 
to Stalin, 79; Soviet contribution to end of, lx 
collective enterprises, 71 
collective farms (kolkhozy), lxii, 76, 118, 473, 
538, 565; changes to, 521-22; control of, by 
state agencies, 521; conversion of, to state 
farms, 522; defined, 521; DOSAAF clubs in, 
742; KGB lectures to, 772-74; income in, 
521; labor productivity of, 521; markets, 
456; number of, 522; output of, 521; plan- 
ning reform in, 466-67; preschools in, 251; 
quota for deputies to Congress of People's 
Deputies, 348; resistance to, 69 
collective ownership: defined, 452; kinds of, 452 
collectivization, forced, lviii, 295; of agricul- 
ture, 473, 519-20, 529, 593; described, 520; 
effect of, 529; of peasantry, 69, 148, 154; 
regimentation and, 71; resistance to, 69, 520; 
results of, 473, 520 
combined arms operational offensive, 679 



1017 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



combined arms strategic operation, 676, 678-79 
combines, 453, 492 
Come and See (Klimov), 392 
Comecon. See Council for Mutual Economic 
Assistance 

Comecon Council Session, 856; function of, 856 

Comecon Executive Committee, 856-57; Bureau 
for Integrated Planning and, 860; council 
committees of, 856-57; economic depart- 
ments in, 856; function of, 856 

Comecon planning, 866-70; coordination of na- 
tional plans under, 867-68; political prob- 
lems in, 866 

Comecon Secretariat, 856, 857; function of, 857 

Commission on Research and Exploitation of 
Cosmic Space, 376 

commissions, party, 292, 301-2, 351, 355-57; 
assignments to, 355; deputies on, 355; draft- 
ing legislation, 356; economic planning in, 
357, 358; formation of, factors in, 301; func- 
tions of, 355-56; influence of CPSU over, 
356; membership of, 355, 356; oversight of 
government by, 356; as party bureaucracy 
administrators, 292; as policy implementers, 
292; purpose of, 301; role of, 350-51; sig- 
nificance of, 301-2 

Committee for State Security (KGB) (see also 
intelligence; see also under names of direc- 
torates), 95, 301, 307, 346, 700, 756, 761, 
783; acknowledgment of abuses by, 764; in 
armed forces, 728; authority of, lxxx; auton- 
omy, 765; Border Troops, 791-93; branches 
of, 765-66; cadres demoralized by "secret 
speech," 761; cadre selection, 766; cam- 
paigns against dissidents, 772; campaigns 
against political crime, 772; career patterns, 
770; censorship by, 373,774; centralization 
of, 766; Collegium, 766; control by, of scien- 
tists, 634; control in, 766; creation of, 755, 
782; directed, 766; dissidents monitored by, 
774; and domestic security, 771-76; eco- 
nomic crimes investigated by, 771; efforts to 
improve image of, 761; Eighth Chief Direc- 
torate, 767; electronic espionage, 779; Fifth 
Chief Directorate, 767; First Chief Direc- 
torate, 767; foreign intelligence role of, 
776-81; foreign policy responsibilities of, 
409; functions of, 766-69, 771; Glavlit con- 
trolled by, 374; under Gorbachev, 763-64; 
influence of, on foreign policy, 780-81; in- 
formers recruited by, 766; interference of, 
in legal system, 789; investigations by, 787; 
local administration of, 766; manpower, 767; 
mission of, 755; nationalities in, 770; nuclear 
weapons charged to, 776; organization of, 
766-69, 768; party control of, lxxiv, 769-70; 
party influence in, lxix; as party members, 



769; personnel, 770-71; political crimes in- 
vestigated by, 771; political police powers of, 
restricted, 760-71; political vigilance lectures, 
772-74; predecessors of, 756-60; preventive 
tasks, 767, 772; in purges by Gorbachev, 
763-64; purges of, 770; recruitment sources, 
770; restrictions on, 761, 762, 771; role of, 
in coup of 1991 , lxxx; role of, in making for- 
eign policy, 403; role of, in leadership suc- 
cession, 756; rules governing, 771; Russians 
as bureau chiefs of, 140; Second Chief Direc- 
torate, 767; security troops of, 793, 794; 
Seventh Directorate, 767; signal troops of, 
723; special departments of, 733, 775, 766; 
statute of, 766; structure of, 765-66; super- 
vision of, 360; support of, for terrorism, 
779-80; tasks of, 766-67; technological espi- 
onage by, 737; Third Chief Directorate, 733; 
turnover rate, 770 
Committee of People's Control, 335, 344, 351, 
360 

Committee of Soviet Women: quota for depu- 
ties to Congress of People's Deputies, 348 

committees, party, 351, 355-57; assignments 
to, 355; deputies on, 355; drafting legisla- 
tion, 356; economic planning in, 358; func- 
tions of, 355-56; influence of CPSU over, 
356; membership of, 355, 356; oversight of 
government by, 356 

communications industry (see also mass media 
and under form of communication), 452, 
582-86; density of, 545; government control 
of, 582; government use of, 582; growth in, 
582; influences on development of, 545; out- 
put of, as percentage of net material product, 
453; party influence in, lxix; products of, 
499; radio, 546, 582; satellite system of, 582; 
telephone, 546, 582; television, 546, 582 

Communications, Ministry of, 582, 586; re- 
sponsibilities of, 582, 585 

Communications Equipment Industry, Minis- 
try of the, 646 

communism, 655; full, 290; Marx's definition 
of, 281 

Communism, Mount, 108 

communist ethics, 249 

Communist Information Bureau (Cominform), 
80; conflict over, with Yugoslavia, 414, 424; 
dissolved, 414; members of, 414 

Communist International (Comintern), 80, 
407; contacts by, in sub-Saharan Africa, 438; 
dissolution of, by Stalin, 414; founded by 
Lenin, 62, 414; as means of controlling for- 
eign communists, 62; support of, for Nazi 
Party, 72; Yugoslavia expelled from, 424 

Communist Manifesto, The (Marx and Engels), 
339 

communist parties abroad, 410, 414-15; activi- 
ties of, 415; ideological maturity of, 414; 



1018 



Index 



nonruling, 407, 414; recognition of, 414; 
Soviet influence on, 415 

Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, 90, 423 

Communist Party of Spain, 422 

Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) 
(see also party control, party membership), 81, 
90, 137, 228, 311, 330, 331, 344, 347, 493, 
522, 553, 594, 731, 750, 764, 783; agitprop 
of, 377; appointments, criteria for, 314; and 
armed forces, 697, 728-33, 732; arts and 
media used by, to support communism, 371, 
377; atheists in, 184; banned, lxxx; bifurca- 
tion of apparatus, 88, 89; bureaucracy of, 281; 
central institutions in, 292-306; control by, 
of security police, lxxiv; controls, 358; criti- 
cism of, lxxii, lxxiv, 30, 33; demographics of, 
289; demographics of, as source of legitimacy, 
289; discipline, 319; economic planning by, 
452-53, 632; effect of membership in, 211; 
as elite body, 289; endorsement for univer- 
sity admission, 258; enforcement of author- 
ity, 281, 282; ethnic composition of, 323-24; 
exchange of party documents, 319; factions 
proscribed by, 286-88; foreign policy of, 409; 
functions of government, as performed by, 
329; general secretary of, 302-6; Georgians 
as members of, 140, 323; goals of, 281; and 
government, distinctions between, 292, 329; 
guarded by Ninth Directorate, 769; hierar- 
chy of, 306; importance of, lxxvii; importance 
to, of growth in heavy industry, 485; indus- 
trial policy statements by, 492; influence of, 
on military-industrial complex, lxxv; influence 
of, over commissions and committees, 356; 
influence of, over science, 633; interference 
of, in legal system, 789; intermediate-level or- 
ganizations in, 306-13; Jews as members of, 
140; journalists as members of, 378; judges 
screened by, 788; KGB created by, 755; KGB 
as members, 769; KGB under, 769; as lead- 
er of world communist movement, 290-91, 
320; legitimacy of, 282, 288-91, 329; mem- 
bership of, lxviii-lxix, 313, 346, 348, 733; 
military doctrine of, 653, 659-66; military 
policy of, 659-66; military representation in, 
729-30; nomenklatura authority of, 313; organi- 
zation of, 294; origins of, 282; pensions for 
administrative elite, 275; people's dissatisfac- 
tion with, lxxv; planning function of, 462; as 
policy maker, 292, 329, 628; power of, lxix; 
power of, under Stalin, 71 ; primary party or- 
ganizations (PPOs), 281, 292, 312-13; purges, 
319; purpose of rule of, 290; quota for depu- 
ties to Congress of People's Deputies, 348; 
reasons for joining, 319-20; recruitment for 
KGB from, 770; reform in, 309; resignation 
of prominent members of, lxviii; role of, 
lxvii-lxviii; role of, in Constitution of 1977, 
334; role of, in education, 244-45, 247-48; 



in rural society, 225; Russian tradition incor- 
porated into, 289, 291; Russians as members 
of, 140; salaries in, 220; social composition 
of, 322-25; as sole interpreter of Marxist ideol- 
ogy, 281, 282, 284, 289; training, 282, 320- 
22; as vehicle for upward mobility, 289-90; 
youth organizations used by, 229-30 

Communists (see also Bolshevik government, 
Bolsheviks, Communist Party of the Soviet 
Union), 55; central Soviet government ad- 
ministered by, 64; execution of imperial fam- 
ily by, 63; policies of left-wing, 66; policies 
of right-wing, 66 

Comprehensive Program for Scientific and Technical 
Cooperation to the Year 2000 (1985) (Comecon), 
603, 854, 873; areas of self-sufficiency under, 
603; benefits of, 869-70; economic restruc- 
turing under, 863; purposes of, 854, 863, 869 

Comprehensive Program for the Further Extension and 
Improvement of Cooperation and the Further De- 
velopment of Socialist Economic Integration by the 
Comecon Member Countries (1971), 854, 858, 
861, 867, 873; described, 861; function of, 
861-62; joint projects under, 868; joint plan- 
ning under, 867-68; market relations under, 
862; monetary problems under, 866; prices 
under, 864-65; socialist economic integra- 
tion in, 861 

Comprehensive System of International Peace 
and Security, 446 

computer centers, 636 

computers, 384-85, 479, 499, 623, 869; devel- 
oped by Soviet Union, 385; lack of, 649; 
literacy requirement, 385; planned produc- 
tion of, 481 

Concerted Plan for Multilateral Integration Measures 
(Comecon), 862, 867-68; projects under, 868 

Conference of First Secretaries of Communist 
and Workers' Parties and of the Heads of 
Government of the Comecon Member Coun- 
tries, 856 

Congo, 414, 438; priviliged affiliation of, with 

Comecon, 616 
Congress of Berlin, 38 

Congress of People's Deputies, lxviii, lxxiv, 
296, 304, 329, 335, 341, 342, 346-50, 352, 
353, 355, 358, 408; activities of, 340; ante- 
cedent of, 334; candidates for, 347; categories 
of deputies, 348; demographics of deputies, 
3; dissolution of, lxxxi; elections to, 347, 
348-50; eligibility for election to, 348; for- 
eign policy responsibilities of, 408; origin of, 
346-47; quotas for deputies, 348; responsi- 
bilities of, 347; role of, 330; voters in elec- 
tions to, 347, 348 

Congress of Soviets, 332, 334; Central Execu- 
tive Committee of, 332; eliminated, 333; 
power of, 332; Second, 60, 401 

Congress of Vienna, 29 



1019 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Constantine Alexandrovich, 30 
Constantinople, 3, 5, 7, 8, 19, 186; fall of, 13 
Constituent Assembly, 60 
Constitutional Democratic Party, 46 
Constitutional Oversight Committee, 330, 334, 

335, 342, 347, 353; powers of, 334-35 
constitutional rights, 335-38; lack of protection 

for, 338; limits on, 338 
constitution of 1905, 4 

constitution of 1918, 332-33; party as ruler of 
Russia under, 332; power granted under, 
332; provisions of, 332; rights in, 332; Sov- 
narkom in, 332-33 

constitution of 1924, 333 

constitution of 1936, 71, 333 

Constitution of 1977, lxi, 89, 284, 304, 329, 
331, 333-40, 343, 346, 355; amendments to, 
334-35, 340, 347, 352; changes in, lxxi; con- 
tent of, 329-30; councils of elder members 
in, 354; Defense Council in, 700; duties in, 
331, 339; equal rights for women under, 212, 
230-31; federal system in, 361; foreign policy 
under, 407-8, 408-9; free education guaran- 
teed in, 243; free medical care guaranteed 
in, 243; judiciary under, 787; KGB under, 
765; military service under, 739, 747; min- 
istries under, 345; ownership of means of 
production under, 452; political theory un- 
derlying, 331; Presidium's authority in, 352; 
Presidium's chairman in, 352; principles es- 
tablished in, 334; Procuracy under, 787; pro- 
visions of, 331; rights in, 331, 335-38; 
Supreme Court in, 359; Supreme Soviet in, 
354; system of Soviets in, 332 

constitutions: Marx's understanding of role of, 
332 

constitutions, Soviet, 331-32; amendment pro- 
cess, 335; political theory underlying, 331; 
provisions of, 331-32; rights under, 335-38; 
role of, 332 

Construction and Troop Billeting, 702, 721, 
747 

Consultative Committee (Warsaw Pact), 663 
consumer goods, 475, 476, 495; availability of, 
513-14; commitment to improving produc- 
tion of, 486; defined, 512; electronic, avail- 
ability of, 513-14; import of, 602, 611, 615; 
lack of priority in producing, 513; poor qual- 
ity of, 513; produced by the chemical in- 
dustry, 502; and private enterprise, 480; 
rationing of, 513; role of electronics indus- 
try in producing, 499; shortages in, 513; 
waiting periods for, 513 
consumer industry, 512-25; production goals 
of, 514 

consumption, per capita, 457, 478 
contraception (see also abortion): abortion as 
chief form of, 234; to control family size in 
Central Asia, 236; lack of artificial methods, 



234; method, by social category, 234; num- 
ber of unwanted pregnancies resulting from 
lack of, 234 

contract brigades, agricultural: autonomy of, 
525; bonuses under, 525; described, 525; 
family, 525; and improvement in agricultural 
performance, 530; number of, 525 

control: agencies for, 453; defined, 358-59; eco- 
nomic, 472; figures, 461, 462; figures, non- 
binding, 468; justification for, 284; of soci- 
ety by party, 281, 282 

control organs, 358-61 

conventional forces: modernization of, 699; 

reduced by Khrushchev, 691 
Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE), 692 
cooperative ownership, defined, 452 
cooperatives, 456 

Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Ex- 
port Controls (CoCom), 608, 610 
Corps of Gendarmes, 757 
corruption, campaign against, 304 
cossacks, 14, 107, 141 

Cossacks, Ukrainian, 141; defined, 18; role of, 
in Ukrainian uprising (1648), 18 

Council Committee for Cooperation in Plan- 
ning, 856, 867; function of, 857, 867 

Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Come- 
con), 344, 437, 497, 853-74; agencies affiliated 
with, 858; Charter of, 854, 858; China's 
withdrawal from, 604; Comprehensive Program 
(1971), 861-62, 863-64; concern of, with 
world socialist system, 857; Concerted Plan of, 
868-69; coordinated activities of, 860; coun- 
cil committees of, 856-57, 867; Council Ses- 
sion of, 856; dissolution of, lx; economic 
cooperation in, 854, 856, 870-71; economic 
restructuring under, 862, 863; and the EEC, 
610, 873; evolution of, 858-64, 872-73; 
exchange rates in, 865-66; Executive Com- 
mittee of, 856-57, 860, 867; formal cooper- 
ation of Yugoslavia with, 603; founding of, 
853, 854; frequency of meetings of, 858, 863; 
function of, 859; goals of, 853; interstate con- 
ferences in, 857; joint projects in, 868; under 
Khrushchev, 859-61; kinds of relationships 
with, 855; labor resources of, 870; liquidity 
shortages in, 862, 864; market relations and 
investments of, 864-66; meetings of, 863, 
873; members of, 423, 601, 854; member- 
ship, 854-55; military support in, 870-71; 
mixed economic system of, 863; national par- 
ticipation in, 855; in the 1980s, 862-63; ob- 
server countires in, 616, 855; operation of, 
858; planning and, 866- 70, 872; power con- 
figurations within, 870; pricing system of, 
602, 864-65; problems in, 873; purpose of, 
594, 601, 853, 854; resistance to Soviet domi- 
nation of, 853; right to refrain from parti- 
cipation in, 858; science and technology 



1020 



Index 



cooperation among, 856, 869-70; scientific 
institutes in, 857; Secretariat of, 856, 857; 
Soviet domination of, 853, 854; Soviet eco- 
nomic aid to, 591, 871; Soviet trade with, 
591, 601-3, 605; standing commissions in, 
873-74; 857; structure of, 856-58; support 
of, for developing countries, 872; trade, 
intraregional, in, 864, 865-66; trade, multi- 
lateral, in, 866; and the United Nations, 873 

Council of Chalcedon, 189 

Council of Ministers, lxxii, 82, 247, 276, 292, 
295, 316, 330, 332, 333, 335, 340, 341'-42, 
353, 354, 356, 436, 493, 594, 595, 597, 600, 
640, 734, 735, 760; activities of, 340; advice 
of, on policy, 629; armed forces under, 700; 
authority of, 330, 341; diplomatic recogni- 
tion by, 409; duties of, 341; economic plan- 
ning by, 357-58, 453, 632; elected, 333; 
foreign policy role of, 408-9; Glavlit's role 
under, 374; industrial complexes under, 467, 
491-92; KGB under, 760, 765, 769; Law on, 
335; meetings of, 342; members of, 342, 346; 
membership in, 341-42; Ministry of Defense 
and, 701; planning function of, 461, 462, 
492; policies of, 628; as policy implementer, 
629; powers of, 342; Presidium of, 341, 
408-9; responsibilities of, 332-33; role of, 
330; structure of, 341 

Council of Ministers chairman, 342-43; ap- 
pointed by Supreme Soviet, 350; as head of 
government, 329, 342; as head of party, 342; 
Khrushchev as, 342; Lenin as, 342; as mem- 
ber of Politburo, 330; power of, 343; role of, 
in economic administration, 342-43; Stalin 
as, 342 

Council of Ministers Presidium, 343-44; as eco- 
nomic bureau, 344; members of, 343-44; 
power of, 343 
Council of Nationalities, 195 
Council of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom) 
{see also Council of Ministers), 60, 82, 760 
Council of the Federation, lxxii; formed, lxxi 
Counterrevolution (1905-07), 45-46 
counterrevolution, combating, 684 
coup d'etat of August 1991, lxxviii-lxxxi; civil 
reaction to, lxxix; civilian casualties in resist- 
ing, lxxix; collapse of, lxxx; decrees under, 
lxxix; international reaction to, lxxix; plot- 
ters, lxxviii-lxxix; support for, lxxix 
Courland, Duchy of, 150 
court system, 359, 360-61; appeals under, 361; 
role of judge, 360-61; structure of court 
cases, 360 

CPSU. See Communist Party of the Soviet 
Union 

Credentials Commission, 350 

Crimea, lxxviii, lxxx, 75, 88, 100, 110, 557; 

annexed by Catherine II, 24; climate of, 112; 

European attack on, 27; nationalist demon- 



strations in, 793; Tatar population in, 176 

Crimean Autonomous Republic, 176 

crime and punishment: amnesty, 790; in armed 
forces, 749; death penalty, 790; economic, 
763, 790; under Gorbachev, 790; labor 
camps, 790; nonpolitical, 790; parole, 790; 
penalties for, 790; violent, 790 

Crime and Punishment (Dostoevskii), 40, 394 

Crimean Khanate, 175 

Crimean Mountains, 108 

Crimean War, 32; backwardness manifested in, 
34; foreign affairs after, 36-38 

critical realism: defined, 370; as artistic pro- 
test, 370, 371; used by Bolsheviks to control 
culture, 370 

criticism, 318-19 

Croatians, 138 

crusades, 8 

Cuba, 86, 407, 414, 416, 423, 439, 441, 716; 
as burden on Comecon, 871; Comecon aid 
to, 871; communist revolution in, 440; Gor- 
bachev's visit to, 441 ; as member of Come- 
con, 601, 603, 854, 871; military advisers 
in, 684; military forces of, airlifted to An- 
gola, 438-39; power of, in Comecon, 871; 
role of, in Latin American terrorism, 779-80; 
satellite communications hookup to, 582; 
Soviet economic aid to, 591, 592, 605; Soviet 
military bases in, 603, 871; Soviet support 
for, lx; Soviet trade with, 612; Soviet treaty 
with, 441; troops of, in Third World, 684; 
withdrawal of, from Angola, 439 

Cuban missile crisis, lix, 87, 88, 571, 716 

cult of personality, 291; Brezhnev's, 94, 291; 
history of, 291; Khrushchev's, 291; Lenin's, 
291; Stalin's, 84, 88, 291 

cult of the just tsar, 291 

cultural exchanges, 416, 418-19 

cultural purges, 78 

cultural revolution, 281, 283 

cultural thaw, 84, 385, 392 

culture {see also arts, literature, music), 93-94; 
restrictions on, under Brezhnev, 89 

Culture, Ministry of, 247, 257, 391, 582 

currency of Comecon members, 865-66 

Cyprus, 431 

Cyrillic: Eastern Orthodox liturgy written in, 7 
Czechoslovakia, 101, 414, 423, 425, 467, 581, 
885, 890; army of, under Soviet control; 
Hitler's demands for, 73; intelligence gather- 
ing by, 780; liberalization in, 882; as mem- 
ber of Comecon, 601, 854, 859; military 
agreement of, with Afghanistan, 434; nuclear- 
free zone proposed by, 691; occupation of, by 
Red Army, 877; revolution of 1989, lix; satel- 
lite communications hookup to, 582; Soviet 
forces stationed in, 728; Soviet military alli- 
ance with, 73; Soviet relations with, 407; 



1021 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Soviet treaty with, 877; Soviet withdrawal 
of forces from, 444; Warsaw Pact invasion 
of (1968), 90, 419, 420, 423, 425, 442, 682, 
699, 719, 781, 861, 882-83, 885 
Czechoslovak People's Army, 883; purge of, 
883 

Czechs, 138, 146 



Dagestan Autonomous Republic, 159 

Dahlak, Soviet military base in, 685 

dairy farming, 536 

Dalmatia, 50 

Danes, 151 

Daniel, Iulii, 381 

Daniil (Prince), 9 

Daniil Aleksandrovich, 12 

Danish Straits, 680 

Danube River, 36 

Danzig, Gulf of, 101 

Daoud Khan, Mohammad, 434 

Dardanelles, 28, 32, 48, 50 

Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years, The (Ait- 
matov), 388 

death: causes of, 269, 271; rates, 269 

Decembrists: origins of, 30; revolt of, 291 

Decembrists' revolt, 30 

decentralization, 608 

Decree Number 358: 593, 594 

Decree of the Press, 371 

Decree on Peace, 401-2 

Defense, Ministry of, lxxvi, 582, 700, 701-2, 
723, 725, 731, 745, 746, 749, 756, 791, 793, 
880, 885; foreign policy responsibilities of, 
409; KGB control by, 769; in Main Mili- 
tary Council, 701; members of, 702, 730; 
military research and development under, 
646, 647; minister of, 702; organization of, 
704; Premilitary Training Directorate of, 
742; responsibilities of, 702; salaries in, 220; 
as strong consumer, 465; supervision of, 
701-2 

Defense Council, 303, 350, 665, 700-701, 702, 
703, 781; decisions of, 701, 734; chairman 
of, 353, 403, 408, 700; membership of, 700; 
military research and development under, 
493, 646 

Defense Industry, Ministry of the, 646 
Defense Industry Department (CPSU Central 

Committee), 734 
defense spending, 469-70, 733-34; budget 

items, 733-34; glasnost' in, 734; on research 

and development, 734; as percentage of 

GNP, 734; total for 1988, 733 
de Gaulle, Charles, 420 
Delianov, Ivan, 36 

democratic centralism, lxxv, 65, 228, 284-88, 
309, 312, 313, 329, 340, 346; accountabil- 
ity in, 286; contradictions in principles of, 



286; decision making in, 286; defined, 281, 
282-83; in Presidium, 358; principles of, 
284-86; Western view of, 286 

Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North 
Korea), 81, 101, 413, 414, 433; military ad- 
visers in, 684; satellite communications 
hookup to, 582; Soviet economic relations 
with, 601, 605 

demographic literacy, 130 

demography. See population 

demokratizatsiia (democratization), lvii, 262; de- 
fined, lxvii; effects of, lix; problems with, lvii 

Denmark, 14, 423 

deserts, 107, 112, 527 

design organizations, 635; design bureaus, 635, 
636, 665; organizational separation and, 
638-39, 640; planning by, 635; responsibil- 
ities of, 635; technological institutions in, 635 

de-Stalinization, 88, 255, 762, 879-80; effect 
of, on Eastern Europe, 86; effect of, on secu- 
rity police, 761; halted under Brezhnev, 89; 
initiated by "secret speech," 84, 761 

detente, 92, 416, 418, 421, 772; under Brezh- 
nev, lix; consequences of, for Warsaw Pact, 
889; end of, 891; meaning of, 416, 420; mili- 
tary strategy during, 676; new, 419; science 
under, 627-28; Warsaw Pact under, 888-91 

Deutsche Welle, 382 

development, 624; expansion of, 627; organiza- 
tional separation and, 638-39, 640; organi- 
zations, 634-37 

Dewey, John, 249 

dialectical materialism, 626 

Dictatorship of Conscience (Shatrov), 394 

dictatorship of the proletariat, 60, 65, 284, 332, 
655; fulfilled, 334 

diet, 519; fish in, 539; Khrushchev's concern 
for, 522; per capita consumption of meat and 
dairy products, 538 

diplomacy, 345, 357, 408, 409, 410-13; bour- 
geois, 410; communist, 410-13; described, 
412 

diplomatic recognition: establishment of, 412; 
pursuit of, 412 

disease: causes of, 270; increases in, 269, 270; 
kinds of, 269 

disinformation: defined, 779; United States as 
prime target for, 779 

dissidents: confinement of, in psychiatric hospi- 
tals, 772; KGB attacks on, 771; party policy 
toward, 774-75; repression of, by Brezhnev, 
90; scientists as, 634 

distribution system, 456-57, 460; agricultural, 
460; collective farm markets, 456; coopera- 
tives, 456; decentralization of, 457, 468-69; 
output of, as percentage of net material 
product, 453; percentage of labor force in, 
456; rationing in, 469; retail outlets, 456; 
sales by individuals, 453; wholesale, 457 



1022 



Index 



divorce, lxvi, 100, 125-27, 233; attitudes of 
non-Russian nationalities toward, 231; child 
custody after, 233; cost of, 233; effect of al- 
coholism on, 130, 270; factors contributing 
to rate of, 212; housing shortage as cause of, 
233; in NEP era, 68; obtaining, 233; rates 
of, 233; rates of, and population problems, 
125; reasons for, 233; restriction of, 71 

Dmitrii, First False, 15 

Dmitrii, Second False, 15 

Dnepropetrovsk, 315-16 

Dnepropetrovskaya Oblast, 316 

Dnepropetrovsk College of Metallurgy, 316 

Dnepr Railroad, 557 

Dnepr River, 7, 18, 24, 25, 33, 101, 138, 568, 
581; hydroelectric system on, 108; Ukraine 
split along, 141 
Dnepr River Valley, 3, 5, 8, 12, 527, 532 
Dnestr River, 5, 24; hydroelectric system on, 
108 

Dnestr River Valley, 125 

Dobroliubov, Nikolai, 371 

Dobrynin, Anatolii, 407 

doctor of science degree, 260 

"doctors' plot," 81 

Doctor Zhivago (Pasternak), 382, 398 

Donbass industrial area: coal industry in, 
508-9; coal reserves in, 508; reduction of 
resources in, 488 

Donetsk metallurgical plant, 501 

Donetsk Railroad, 557 

Donets River basin, 12, 527, 532 

Don River, 18, 33, 568, 581; hydroelectric sys- 
tem on, 108 

DOSAAF. See Voluntary Society for Assistance 
to the Army, Air Force, and Navy 

Dostoevskii, Fedor, 39-40, 394 

drug abuse, 99; increase in, 271 

Druzhba (Friendship) oil pipeline, 860 

dual subordination, 346 

Dubcek, Alexander, 882, 883 

Dubna, 585 

Duma, lvii, 47, 50; defined, 46; dissolution of, 
46; elections in, 46; Executive Committee 
formed, 57; First, 46, 176; Fourth, 47; Sec- 
ond, 46-47, 176; Third, 47 

dumas, 7, 34, 36, 283 

Dushanbe, 170 

dvorianstvo (nobility), 17 

Dzerzhinskii, Feliks E., 547; expansion of rail- 
road system under, 547; Vecheka under, 758 



Eastern Europe, 56; consumption levels of, 478; 
as defensive buffer, 682, 875-77, 892; energy 
pipeline to, 546; military advisers in, 684; 
reaction of, to changes in Soviet leadership, 
424; revolutions of 1989, lix-lx; Soviet armed 
forces withdrawn from, 692; Soviet control 



of, 877; Soviet demands for supplies from, 
78; Soviet economic activity with, 591, 594; 
Soviet forces stationed in, 728; Soviet hege- 
mony in, lviii; Soviet hegemony in, as for- 
eign policy, 401, 419; Soviet influence over, 
419, 424; Soviet military intervention in, 
682; Soviet occupation of, lviii, 77, 79, 699; 
Soviet trade with, lxiii, 594; Soviet troops sta- 
tioned in, 883, 884-87; and Soviet Union, 
power of, in Comecon, 870; terrorist aid chan- 
neled through, 780, withdrawal of Soviet 
troops from, lx 

Eastern Front (World War I), 50 

Eastern Orthodox Church {see also Belorussian 
Autocephalous Orthodox Church, Georgian 
Orthodox Church, Russian Orthodox 
Church, Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox 
Church), 4, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 145, 181, 183, 
184-89; administration of, 185-86; beliefs, 
184-85; clergy, 185; denominations in, 185; 
in Kievan Rus', 9; reasons for dominance 
of, 7; teachings, 184-85; worship, 185 

"Eastern Question," 31-32 

East European Plain, 4, 104 

East Germany. See German Democratic Re- 
public 

East Siberian Economic Region, 511 
East Slavic region, 5 

East Slavs (see also Belorussians, Russians, 
Ukrainians, Kievan Rus', Muscovy, Rus- 
sian Empire), 3, 4, 7, 10, 141, 144; domi- 
nance of, lvii, 138; isolation of, 7; major 
pre-Soviet political formations of, 3; as mem- 
bers of CPSU, 324; origins of, 5 

economic aid, 601; amount of, 592; to Come- 
con members, 591; expansion of, 592; under 
GKES, 594; reassessment of, 592; to Third 
World, 605 

economic control, 458-71; figures, 461, 462; 
pricing policy as, 470 

economic councils, 466, 627 

economic development, 451, 488, 624; for 
Siberia, 479; of the Soviet Far East, 479 

economic laws of socialism, 458 

economic measurements: net output, 467; 
Soviet-style, 452, 467, 470 

economic plan, 315, 357; distribution of funds 
to reflect goals of, 469; elaboration of suc- 
cessive, 462 

economic planning, 458-71; advantages of, 
462-64; basis of, 458; centralized, defined, 
458-60; Marxist- Leninist definition of, 458; 
ratchet system of, 464; socialist laws for, 458 

economic policies, 471-82; and Comecon, 603; 
Marxist blueprint for, 472; past priorities of, 
472-78; problems caused by, 472 

economic production, 458 

economic reform: under Andropov, 467; 
description of, 458; effect of, on wages, 



1023 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



470-71; under Gorbachev, 314, 456-57, 
458, 467, 618-19; under Khrushchev, 84, 
92, 310, 466, 467; under Kosy gin, 92, 466, 
467 

economic regions, 504 

economic structure, 452-58; centralization of, 
under Stalin, 458 

economy, centrally planned (CPE): advantages 
of, 462-64; under Brezhnev, 466, 467; prob- 
lems in, 464-65, 472; production storming 
in, 464-65; science and technology plans 
under, 630; as taut economy, 464 

economy, official, 92-93, 452-54, 456; before 
World War II, 55; centralized under Kosy- 
gin, 92-93; centralized under Stalin, 69; 
debt, 592, 606; expansion of, after World 
War II, 56; growth of, 467, 476, 477, 478, 
480-81, 493; health care in, 456; impact of 
low population growth on, 119; impact of 
surplus of women on, 119; industrialized 
under Stalin, lviii, 69-70; management of, 
by Council of Ministers, 341, 343, 345; 
opening of, 592; priorities for, 452-53; pri- 
vate sector in, 457, 480; problems in, under 
Khrushchev, 88; problems in, under Gor- 
bachev, lx-lxi, lxiv; reform efforts in, 453; 
role of Ministry of Finance in, 457-58; size 
of, 477; socialist ownership of means of 
production in, 452; supply and demand in, 
456; "taut," 456, 464 

economy, unofficial: defined, 211; description 
of, 453-54; illegal activities in, 480; legiti- 
mized, 480 

education, 244-62; access to, in Russian Em- 
pire, 243; access to, in Soviet Union, 218, 
223; under Alexander II, 35; for artistically 
gifted students, 257; under Brezhnev, 93-94; 
characteristics of, 244-45; creation of "new 
school," 245, 250; engineering training in, 
649; exchanges, 410; free, guaranteed by 
Constitution, 243; for handicapped students, 
257; for intellectually gifted students, 257; 
under Khrushchev, 243-44; level of, 93-94, 
250; literacy rate, 243; under Lunacharskii, 
68; Marxist-Leninist philosophical underpin- 
nings of, 244; medical, of women, 35; mili- 
tary, 257; obrazovanie (formal), 245; obstacles 
to reform of, 262; and occupation, 217-18; 
orthodox Marxist interpretation of, 72; over- 
bureaucratization in, 248; party influence in, 
lxix; party's role in, 247-48; of peasants, 35; 
perpetuation of elite in, 94, 218, 223; under 
Peter the Great, 22; political indoctrination 
in, 243, 244, 248, 249, 253; poly technical, 
244; providing workers, 248-49; purpose of, 
lxv; reforms in, under perestroika, 245, 649; 
research and development in, 248; respon- 
sibility of, for socialization, 245; rote learn- 
ing in, 243; science training in, 649; under 



Stalin, 243-44; and vospitanie (upbringing), 
245 

education, higher, lxix-lxv; access to, restricted, 
214; backgrounds of students in, 258; en- 
gineering training in, 649; graduate train- 
ing in, 260; jobs assigned to graduates of, 
260; kinds of, 257-58; length of study, 259; 
locations of, 258; management of, 247-48; 
nationalities represented in, 140; programs 
of, 259; reform of, 262, 649; science train- 
ing in, 636, 649; tuition and fees, 259-60; 
universities, 258; women in, 258 
Education, Ministry of, 35, 247, 248 
Education, Ministry of Higher and Specialized, 
247 

education, secondary, 253-56; class time, 254; 
computer training in, 254, 256; enrollment, 
253; entry of six-year-olds into, 254; final ex- 
aminations in, 255; foreign language study 
in, 254; grades in, 255; intermediate and 
upper curriculum, 254-55; kinds of, 253; 
length of compulsory, 253; number of facil- 
ities, 253; phases in, 254; primary curricu- 
lum in, 254; reform of (1984), 254; rural and 
urban, 254; school year, 254; "socially 
beneficial" labor in, 255; specialized (tech- 
nicums), 256, 262; study of Russian lan- 
guage in, 254; vocational counseling in, 254; 
vocational-technical, 256 
education system, structure of, 252 
egalitarianism, repudiated by Stalin, 214 
Egypt, 43, 86, 614, 712; abrogation of treaty 
with Soviet Union, 684; expulsion of Soviet 
advisers from, 91, 413, 684; improvement 
in Soviet relations with, 432, 433; Soviet 
trade with, 612 
Egyptian army, 91 

Eighth Chief Directorate: responsibility of, 767; 

Security Troops under, 793 
Eighth Five- Year Plan (1966-70), 476 
Eisenhower, Dwight D., 85, 86, 87, 688 
Eisenstein, Sergei, 68, 390 
Ekibastuz, 509, 510 
Ekran, 513-14 

Ekran satellite system, 585; uses of, 585 
El'brus, Mount, 108 

elections, 365-66; campaigning, 365; effect of, 
lxix; efforts to democratize, 365-66; as forum 
for requesting services, 365; multicandidate, 
365; party control over, 365; right to cam- 
paign for, 350; right to stand for, 348; selec- 
tion of candidates for, 365 

electricity: generation and distribution of, 510; 
in rural areas, 520; sources of, 510 

electrification, 472; Lenin's program for, 547; 
of railroads, 547 

electronics industry, 499; chronic problems in, 
499; consumer goods produced by, 499; 
cooperation of, with machine building, 499; 



1024 



Index 



critical branches in, 499; joint ventures in, 
611; most important role of, 499; self- 
sufficiency of Comecon in, 603; technology 
transfer to, 499 

Electronics Industry, Ministry of the, 646 

Eleventh Five- Year Plan (1981-85), 478, 481, 
496, 532, 540 

elite, lxv-lxvi; allocation of housing to, 223; de- 
fined, 216; health care of, 268-69; income 
and benefits of, 216, 220, 471; intelligent- 
sia as, 216; KGB as, 216; Muslim, 176; party 
membership of, 298; pensions of, 275; per- 
petuated by education system, 218; position 
of children of, 211; Soviet, 211 

Elizabeth I, 23 

El Salvador, 440 

emigration, lxxiv, 124 

employment: full, 477; growth in, 477 

energy (see also coal, electricity, fuel, gas, 
nuclear power, oil), 487; acceleration in 
production of, 481; cogeneration, 512; effi- 
ciency in use of, 481; generators of, 510; 
growth of, 510; heat generation, 512; net- 
work, integration of, 510; obstacles to sup- 
ply of, 512; policy goals, 510; renewable, 
510-11; requirements, 488; resources, 488 

Engels, Friedrich, 44, 339, 472, 654 

engineering: curriculum for, 649; problems in 
training, 649; training in, 648-50 

Engineer Troops, 708-10; equipment of, 709- 
10; mission of, 709; organization of, 708-9; 
uniforms and rank insignia of, 738-39 

enterprise, individual, 453, 492; production 
plans for, 462 

enterprise, industrial: transfer of, to Asian 
areas, 474 

enterprise, private, 454, 480; activities in, 480; 
regulations for, 480 

enterprise, state: election of management per- 
sonnel in, 468, 480; election of labor coun- 
cils in, 468-69; fulfillment of contracts by, 
468; government power to disband un- 
profitable, 600; responsibility of, for foreign 
trade, 600; self-financing requirement, 468 

environment, 113-15, 121, 397; air pollution, 
115, 122; Aral region as ecological disaster 
area, 115; degradation of, lxxiii, 100; green 
movement, lxxiii, 113, 130; and opposition 
to construction of electrical plants, 512; pro- 
tection of neglected, 113 

Ermak, 14 

Estonia, 21, 73, 147, 363; annexation of, lviii, 
397, 473, 682; ceded to Russia, 151; con- 
trolled by Sweden, 151 ; establishment of in- 
dependence, 61; German control of, 151; 
independence of, lxxxi; Russification in, 151; 
Soviet invasion of, in 1939, 74, 550 

Estonian Republic, lxx-lxxi, lxxix, 102, 123, 
127, 151, 188, 308, 526; agriculture in, 533; 



autonomy sought by, 362; candidates for 
Congress of People's Deputies, 347; drainage 
projects in, 529; families in, 236; legal age 
for marriage in, 232; minorities in, 152; na- 
tionalist movement suppressed in, 759; 
population of, 152; rate of premarital preg- 
nancy in, 234; religion in, 191; roads in, 562 

Estonians, lxvi, 27, 150, 151-52; distribution 
of, 152; divorce of, 233; education of, 152; 
Germanization of, 151; history of, 151; in- 
dependence movement, 151; language of, 
152; as members of CPSU, 152; oppression 
of, 151-52; population of, 152; as scientific 
workers, 152; secession by, lxxix; urbaniza- 
tion of, 152 

Ethiopia, 90, 431, 438, 439 , 684, 712; Eritrean 
insurgency, 431; military access to, 727; mili- 
tary advisers in, 684; Soviet arms bought by, 
614; Soviet military base in, 685; Soviet sup- 
port for Cuban troops in, 684, 700; ties to 
Comecon, 616, 855 

ethnic diversity (see also minorities, nationali- 
ties), 99 

ethnic groups. See nationalities 

Etorofu Island, 428 

Eurocommunism, 90, 415 

Europe, 44, 410, 430, 561, 569; arms buildup 
in, 692; denuclearization of, 690, 691; de- 
struction of targets in, 677; nuclear-free zone, 
691 

European Community, lxxxi 

European Economic Community (EEC), 592, 

610; normalization agreement with, 619 
Evtushenko, Evgenii, 388, 389, 390, 392 
Executive Committee of the Duma, 57 
exploiting classes; description of, 214; official 

discrimination against, 214 
Export pipeline, 581 

exports: of arms, 614; attempt to increase, 610, 
618; of chemicals, 606, 608; of fuel, 592, 603, 
605, 606, 608, 609, 610, 611-12, 615; of 
manufactured goods, 605-6; of metals, 610; 
as source of hard currency, 592, 605; of tim- 
ber, 606, 610; of tractors, 606; unidentified, 
616 

Ezhov, Nikolai, 70 
Ezhovshchina, 70 



factories: DOSAAF units in, 742; KGB lectures 

to, 772-74; preschools in, 251 
factory workers: in nineteenth-century Russia, 

33 

Falin, Valentin A., 300, 407 

family, 125-27, 234-38; decline of, 100, 235; 
evolution of, 235-36; extended, 238; func- 
tion of, 238; government as surrogate, 238; 
law on, 234, 235; Muslim, 232-33; in NEP 
era, 68; number of children in, 235; role of, 



1025 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



in child-rearing, 246; size of, 127, 212, 236; 
strengthening of, under Stalin, 235; struc- 
tures, 238; subsidies for poor, 235-36, 243; 
typical, 127, 236 

farming. See agriculture 

Fathers and Sons (Turgenev), 39 

Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), 
87, 419, 420, 457, 714; as importer of Soviet 
gas, 508, 581, 609, 610; percentage of GNP 
spent on health care in, 273; relations of, with 
Soviet Union, 420-21; ships acquired from, 
575; trade with, 607 

Fedor I, reign of, 14-15 

Fedor II, 15 

Fedor III, 20 

Fedorchuk, Vitalii, 763, 782, 783 
Fel'tsman, Vladimir, 395 
Fergana Valley, 527 

ferry lines: Crimea-Caucasus, 575; Klaipeda- 
Mukran, 575; Leningrad-Stockholm, 575; 
Vanino-Kholmsk, 575 

fertile triangle, 525 

fertility, 121, 130 

Fifth Chief Directorate (KGB), 767 

Fifth Five-Year Plan (1951-55), 475, 552; in- 
vestment in heavy industry under, 475 

film, 390-92; industry, liberalizing trends in, 
390-91; as propaganda, 384; under Stalin, 
385-88; themes in, dictated by the party, 390 

Final Act of the Conference on Security and 
Cooperation in Europe. See Helsinki Accords 

Finance, Ministry of, 35, 345, 357; functions 
of, 595, 632; role of, in economic system, 
457-58 

financial system, 457-58 

Finland, 47, 61, 79, 101; army of, 699; Bank 
of, 611; bilateral clearing agreements with, 
611; independence of, 61; land concessions 
of, to Soviet Union, 77, 362; reexport by, 
of Soviet oil, 612; resistance of, to Soviet in- 
vasion, 74; Russian acquisition of, 28; Soviet 
invasion of, 550, 699; Soviet relations with, 
422; Soviet trade with, 591, 605, 611-12; ties 
to Comecon, 855 

Finland, Gulf of, 22 

Finnish Civil War, 61 

Finnish Russians, 27, 36, 42, 45 

Finnish-Soviet war. See Soviet-Finnish war 

Finno-Ugric tribes, 8, 138, 149, 151, 181, 182, 
183 

Finns, 151 

First Chief Directorate (KGB), 781; composed 
of, 776-77; Directorate K, 777; Directorate 
S, 776; Directorate T, 776; recruitment for, 
778; responsibility of, 767; rezidenty, 777; 
Service A, 777; Service I, 777; Service R, 
777 

First Five- Year Plan (1928-32), 68-69, 295, 
487; agriculture under, 55, 473; centraliza- 



tion under, 491 ; collectivization of peasan- 
try under, 69, 473; failure of, 69; focus of, 
473; industry under, 55; political controls 
over cultural activity under, 372; problems 
under, 69, 492; railroads under, 547; rapid 
industrialization under, 69; starvation under, 
55 

First Party Congress, 293, 296 

first secretary (see also general secretary), 342 

fish: sources of, 539-40; in Soviet diet, 539; 

Soviet Union as producer of, 540 
fishing, 539-40; factory ships used in, 540; fleet, 

540, 575; production, 540; source of catch, 

539-40 

Fishing Industry, Ministry of the, 575, 595 

five-year plans (see also under individual plans), 
492; for science and technology, 632 

flexible response: adopted by NATO, 662; de- 
fined, 662; Soviet response to, 671 

Follow-on-Forces-Attack (FOFA) (United 
States), 680 

Food Industry, Ministry of the, 524 

food policy, 522-25 

food production: problems with, under Gor- 
bachev, lxii 

Food Program of Brezhnev, 524, 533; objec- 
tive of, 524 

food subsidies, 519, 525 

food supply: output from animal husbandry, 
536-38; problems with, 93, 529; pre-World 
War II, 529 

Foreign Affairs, Ministry of, 345, 407, 409, 
410, 438; diplomatic service in, 409; organi- 
zation of, 410; responsibilities of, 409-10 

Foreign Affairs Commission, 356, 357, 408 

Foreign Affairs Committee, 356, 357 

foreign aid, 410; economic, 410, 415, 431, 438, 
601; military, 410, 438; propaganda, 415 

foreign economic activity: administration of, 
594-95; amount of, 591; borrowing of hard 
currency, 591; centralization of, 594-95; 
with communist countries, 591 ; economic aid 
programs, 591, 605; with Third World, 591; 
with Western industrialized countries, 591 

Foreign Economic Activity Bank, 457, 600; ex- 
pansion of activities of, 600 

Foreign Economic Relations, Ministry of, 409, 
594, 600 

foreign policy: assistance to national liberation 
movements, 402; basic character of, 401-2; 
under Brezhnev, 90-92; Central Committee 
departments responsible for, 404-7; change 
in priorities in, 402; and Comecon, 603; Con- 
gress of People's Deputies responsibilities for, 
408; Council of Ministers Presidium respon- 
sibilities for, 408-9; diplomatic isolation under 
Stalin, 72; in Eastern Europe, 84, 402; en- 
vironment for innovation in, 404; ideology 
of, 401-3; under Khrushchev, 84, 85-87; in 



1026 



Index 



Latin America, 440-41; national security as 
goal of, 402; in the 1920s, 66-67; in the 
1930s, 72-73; objectives of, 401-2; organi- 
zations responsible for, 408; Politburo as 
maker of, 403-4; Presidium responsibilities 
for, 408; priorities in, 402; in sub-Saharan 
Africa, 438-40; Supreme Soviet responsibil- 
ities for, 408; toward non-Western world, 67; 
toward Western world, 66-67, 91-92 
foreign relations: 406; with bordering states, 
403; after the Crimean War, 36-38; with 
Eastern Europe, 403; East- West, 412; state 
visits for, 413; with Third World, 403; with 
United States, 403; with Western Europe, 
403 

foreign trade, 410, 452, 469, 472, 570; amount 
of exports and imports, 591, 607; balance 
of, 612-13, 618; bureaucracy, 594-600; bu- 
reaucracy, decentralization of, 599, 600; bu- 
reaucracy, problems caused by, 597; with 
Cambodia, 605; changes in, 594; with China, 
604-5; with Comecon, 601-3; commodity 
composition of, 592; composition of, 613-15; 
conduct of, 593, 601; deficit in, 606, 607, 610; 
with Eastern Europe, lxiii; expansion of, 571, 
608; exports, 595, 601-2, 603, 605-6; with 
Finland, 611; fluctuation of trade patterns, 
606; free trade zones, 604; imports, 595, 601- 
2, 603, 606; with Japan, 610-11; with Laos, 
605; manner of transactions, 591; methods of, 
591; nationalization of, 472; under NEP, 593; 
with North Korea, 605; operation of, 595-97; 
organizations (FTOs), 594, 595, 596; origins 
of, 593; perestroika in, 597, 608; restrictions on, 
by Western nations, 593-94; role of, 591, 619; 
and self-sufficiency policy, 591, 607; with so- 
cialist countries, 601-5; state monopoly on, 
593-94; with Third World, lxiii, 592, 612-18; 
turnover, 599; with United States, lxiii, 607- 
9; unnecessary delays in, 597; with West, lxiii; 
with Western industrialized countries, 592, 
601, 605-12; with Yugoslavia, 603-4 

Foreign Trade, Ministry of, 594, 597, 608; abo- 
lition of, 600; FTOs under, 596, 599; func- 
tions of, 595; organization of, 598 

Foreign Trade Bank, 595, 600 

forestry, 538-39; accomplishments of, 539; 
animal resources in, 539; employment in, 
539; industry, 526; product of, 538-39; pro- 
duction, 538, 539; region, 538 

forest-steppe zone, 526-27; agriculture in, 527; 
chernozem soil in, 527; climate of, 527 

Fourth Five- Year Plan (1945-50), 474, 552, 566 

fractional orbital bombardment system, 689 

France, 44, 47, 49, 50, 73, 457; acquiescence 
of, to Hider's demands, 73; contributions of, 
to Soviet chemical industry, 503; in Crimean 
War, 32; declaration of war on Germany, 
73; establishing relations with Japan, 37; as 



importer of Soviet gas, 508, 581, 609; in- 
volvement of, in Russian Civil War, 61 , 63; 
as member of Cominform, 414; as member 
of United Nations, 445; nuclear forces of, 
417, 420, 444, 690; Russian relations with, 
36, 37; Russian wars with, 27, 28; Soviet 
military alliance with, 73; Soviet relations 
with, 420, 421-22; state visit by Gorbachev 
to, 420 

Franco-Prussian War, 35 

Frank, Peter, 297 

Frederick the Great, 23 

French Revolution, 26, 27 

Friedland, Russian defeat by Napoleon at, 28 

Frontal Aviation, 711, 714, 725; aircraft of, 
711; helicopters of, 711; mission of, 711; or- 
ganization of, 711 

Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Fre- 
limo), 439 

Fruit and Vegetable Industry, Ministry of the, 
524 

fruit cultivation, 534-36; harvest, 541; kinds 
of, 534; volume of, 534 

Frunze, 169, 497 

Frunze, Mikhail V., 661, 663 

fuel, 505-10; availability of, 505; coal, 505; 
domestic uses of, 505; economy, 490, 503; 
exports of, 505, 605, 613-14; exchanges, in 
Comecon, 864; fossil, 112, 510; gas, 505; oil, 
505-6; and planning, 505; problems with, 
505; reserves of, 505; resource base of, 505; 
as source of hard-currency income, 505 

Fundamental Principles of Criminal Procedure, 
761 

fur industry, 526, 539 

Further . . . Further, and Further/ (Shatrov), 394 

Galicia, 49, 50, 141, 174 

Galicia-Volhynia, 141; as a successor to Kievan 

Rus', 9 
Gandhi, Indira, 436 
Gandhi, Rajiv, 436 
Gapon, Georgii (Fr.), 45 
Gareev, Makhmut A., 663, 671 
Garthoff, Raymond L., 664 
gas, liquefied, 498 

gas, natural, lxxvii, 485, 498, 505, 507-8, 510; 
deposits of, 489; development of, 605; ex- 
ports of, lxiv, 508, 592, 605, 606, 609, 618; 
exports of, amount, 609; obstacles to access 
to, 488; pipeline, 508, 581; problems with, 
507-8; production of, 507; as replacement 
for oil, 507, 508; reserves of, 507; uses of, 505 

gender roles (see also women), 230-34 

General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 
(GATT), 592; observer status requested, 618 

General Machine Building, Ministry of, 646, 
735 



1027 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



general practitioner, 264 

general secretary, 293, 302-6, 342, 344, 348, 
409; base of authority and power of, 303; as 
chairman of Defense Council, 700; client 
turnover under, 303, 305; cult of leader of, 
304; description of, 293; high government 
offices acquired by, 304; importance of, 
302-3; increase of authority by, 303-4; as 
maker of foreign policy, 403; potential suc- 
cessors to, 305; powers of, 303, 304-5, 343; 
rights and duties of, 304-5, 702; transfer of 
authority to, 305 

General Staff, lxxvi, 700, 701, 702-3, 705, 712, 
719, 743, 749, 877, 883, 885-86; domina- 
tion of Ground Forces in, 702; and Minis- 
try of Defense, 702; and military production, 
665, 734; making war plans, 675 

genetics research, 626 

Geneva Summit (1985), 418-19, 892 

Georgia, 61 ; early commitment to Marxism in, 
155 

Georgian language, 180 

Georgian Orthodox Church, 188, 199 

Georgian Republic, lxx, 61, 102, 154, 254, 362; 
citrus fruit grown in, 534; drug abuse in, 
271; Helsinki watch group established in, 
197; major cities of, 156; nationalities in, 
156; party apparatus in, 308; Russian lan- 
guage in, 198; sexually transmitted diseases 
in, 271; tea grown in, 534; tree farms in, 475 

Georgians, lxvi, 27, 42, 45, 139, 153, 155-56, 
158; distribution of, 155; in higher educa- 
tion, 156; history of, 155; language of, 156; 
as members of CPSU, 156, 323; national 
resurgence of, 155, 205; population of, 155; 
prominent, 156; as scientific workers, 156; 
urbanization of, 156 

German, Aleksei, 392 

German army, 74, 75, 145, 148, 150, 877 

German Democratic Republic (East Germany), 
414, 424, 425, 496, 572, 575, 883, 890; con- 
tributions of, to Soviet chemical industry, 
503; formation of, 80; Garrisoned People's 
Police of, 879; intelligence gathering by, 780; 
labor transfers from, 870; as member of 
Comecon, 601, 859; military advisers in, 
684; nuclear-free zone proposed by, 691; 
revolution of 1989, lix; satellite communi- 
cations hookup to, 582; Soviet forces sta- 
tioned in, 728; Soviet influence over, 423; 
Soviet relations with, 407; Soviet withdrawal 
of forces from, 444 

Germanic Order of the Brethren of the Sword, 
149 

German Russians, 27, 124 

Germans (Soviet), 149, 151, 152, 164, 166, 168; 

language of, 183; population of, 183 
Germany, 37, 42, 44, 44, 48, 56, 60, 474, 552, 

756; Anti-Comintern Pact signed by, 73; in 



Balkans, 38; contributions of, to Soviet 
chemical industry, 503; control of Eastern 
Europe by, 682; declaration of war by, on 
Soviet Union, 74; division of, 80; influence 
of, on Baltic nationalities, 147; interests of, 
in Ottoman Empire, 48; invasion of Soviet 
Union by, in World War II, lviii, 55-56, 
142, 180, 474, 488, 550, 723; occupation of, 
by Red Army, 877; occupation of Soviet 
Union by, in World War II, 75-76, 189, 
759; as power under Bismarck, 32; as source 
of Cold War conflict, 80; Soviet military 
operations against, in World War II, 76; 
Soviet relations with, 67; trade with, 474; 
in World War I, 49 

Germany (united), lx; emigration to, lxxiv 

Gladyshev, Viktor, 785 

glasnost' (public discussion), 100, 113, 296, 356, 
745, 765, 774; discussion of nationality ques- 
tions under, 201; East European reaction to, 
425; effects of, lix, lxxii-lxxiv; exposure of 
inadequacies of social services, 244; under 
Gorbachev, lix, lxxii; in health care, 269; in- 
ternal security under, 755; journalism under, 
379; literature under, 389; loss of control of, 
lxxiii; opposition to, 389-90; political free- 
dom under, 338; poverty under, 277 

Glinka, Mikhail, 31 

global zero option, 690 

Gbdunov, Boris, 14; proclaimed tsar, 15 

Gogol, Nikolai, 31, 39 

Golden Horde, 9, 160, 175, 182, 192; defeated 

by Russian army, 10 
Golodnaya Steppe, 527 
Golytsn, 792 

Gomulka, Wladyslaw, 880 

Goncharov, Ivan, 39 

Gonzalez, Felipe, 422 

Good Woman of Szechuan, The (Brecht), 394 

Gorbachev, Mikhail S., lx, 125, 205, 255, 209, 
301, 304, 305, 311, 348, 366, 417, 446, 693, 
735; agriculture under, 520, 524, 529; anti- 
alcohol campaign of, 270; arms control ef- 
forts, 692, 693; arms reductions proposal, 
444; assessment of nationalities question, 
135; attempt by, to retain power, lxxii; 
Brezhnev Doctrine repudiated by, 424; call 
of, for promotion of women and minorities 
in party, 325; "common European home" 
speech of, 421; concessions to nationalities 
by, 202-4; conservative backlash against, 
764; crime and punishment under, 790; cul- 
tural thaw under, 369, 370, 372-73, 383-84, 
389, 392, 394, 397; cuts by, in military bud- 
get, 445, 734; demokratizatsiia under, lvii, lix, 
262, 303, 370; dissidents under, 634; disso- 
lution of Soviet Union under, lxxxi; eco- 
nomic reform under, 314, 467, 479-80, 607, 
618-19; economy under, lxiv; efforts to 



1028 



Index 



reduce mortality rate under, 121; environ- 
mental concerns under, 113; foreign policy 
under, 401, 402, 433; formation of commis- 
sions by, 301; glasnost' under, lix, lxxii, 100, 
113, 201, 244, 295, 303, 370, 745, 755; as 
head of State Council, lxxxi; and indepen- 
dence of republics, lxx-lxxi; individual rights 
under, 786-87; internal security under, 760; 
KGB under, 763, 770, 772; lack of support 
for, lxxviii; and letters to the editor, 379; 
loosening of party strictures on media and 
the arts, lxxii; loss of power of, after coup, 
lxxx; military cuts announced by, 728; 
military-political relations under, 729; mili- 
tary research and development under, 648, 
671; moratorium declared by, on nuclear 
testing, 418; "new thinking" of, be, 373, 429, 
654; in Nineteenth Party Conference, 296; 
Nobel Prize for Peace awarded to, lx; nuclear 
disarmament proposal of, 443-44; overthrow 
of, lxxviii- lxxix; patronage systems under, 
219; perestroika under, lvii, lix, lxxviii, 244, 
295, 303, 360, 370, 451, 525, 592, 755; and 
polytechnical education, 246; popularity of, 
lxviii; post-coup personnel changes by, 
lxxviii; as president, lxxi; as Presidium chair- 
man, 352, 354; as Presidium member-at- 
large, 351; purge of old guard by, 763; 
reduction of armed forces by, lxxvi; reform 
efforts of, 360, 764; reinstatement of, lxxx; 
relations with Japanese under, 428; relations 
with Latin America under, 441; relations 
with Middle East under, 432; religion under, 
lxvii, 20-21; restrictions on KGB, 764; sal- 
ary of, 220; science and technology under, 
640, 649-50; Sino-Soviet relations under, 
427; socialist legality under, 786; state visits 
of, 420, 421, 436, 441; summits of, with 
Reagan, 418-19; technology transfer under, 
644, 649-50; Third World policy of, 437; ties 
with ASEAN under, 437; trade with Come- 
con under, 603; turnover by, in Central 
Committee, 297-98; welfare under, 277; and 
Yeltsin, lxviii 
Gorizont satellite system, 585; uses of, 585 
Gor'kiy, lxxiv, 108, 497-98, 634, 637 
Gor'kiy Railroad, 557 

gorkom (city committee): bureau of, 310; com- 
position of, 310-11; economic administra- 
tion in, 311-12; first secretary of, 311; 
meetings of, 311; members of, 310; secre- 
tariat of, 311; structure of, 310 

Gorky, Maksim, 67, 389, 394 

Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast, 170 

gorodskie raiony (urban districts), 361 

Gorshkov, Sergei, 678 

Gosbank: described, 457; functions of, 595, 

632; monopoly of, ended, 458 
Goskino, 375, 390-91, 597 



Goskomizdat, 375, 597 
Goskomizobretenie, 632-33 
Goskompriroda, 115 

Goskomstat, 461; planning function of, 461 
Goskomtrud, 632 

Gosplan, 260, 344, 357, 595, 600; control 
figures established by, 462; described, 461; 
First Five- Year Plan of, 68; functions of, 595; 
health care programs of, 263; manpower 
problems caused by, 250; military research 
and development under, 647, 734; output 
quotas of, 69; planning methods of, 461-62, 
492; responsibilities of, 461, 630; role of, cur- 
tailed, 468; role of, in World War II, 474; 
training and distribution of specialists by, 250 

Gossnab, 595, 600; functions of, 595, 632 

Gosstandart, 632 

Gostelradio, 375, 582 

Goths, 5 

government, Bolshevik, lvii, 414; armed forces 
organized under, 697-98; arts and media con- 
trolled by, 372; arts and media used by, to 
support communism, 371, 377; economy 
under, 63; effect of, on marriage, 235; 
newspapers closed by, 371; opposition of, to 
external economic control, 593; press con- 
trolled by, 371; refusal of, to pay World War 
I debts, 593; repression by, of opponents, 63; 
revolutionary decrees of, 60; role of railroads 
under, 547; science setbacks under, 625; so- 
cialist society imposed on tsarist Russia by, 
472; Vecheka under, 755, 757-58; war com- 
munism under, 63; and World War I, 60 

government, Soviet: agencies, 345; branches 
of, 329; constitutional authority of, 331- 
40; criticism of, lxxii; disengagement from 
World War I by, 60; functions of, performed 
by party, 329; head of, 329; hierarchy of, 
329; as implementer of policy, 292, 329; 
leaders of, 340; legislative authority in, 340; 
party control over, 340-41; and party, dis- 
tinction between, 292; planning apparatus 
of, 460-61; as source of party legitimacy, 
329; structure of, 340 

government, transitional, lxxxi 

Grachev, Pavel, lxxix 

grain, 530-32; decrease in area allotted to, 531; 
embargo, 92, 416, 614; feed, 531; as foun- 
dation of agriculture, 530-31; harvest, 541; 
importing of, Ixii, Ixiv, 532, 592, 606, 615-16; 
kinds of, 530-31; output, 530; slaughter of 
livestock to conserve, 531; yields, 531 

graphic arts, 397 

Great Depression, 473 

Great Northern War, 21 

Great Patriotic War. See World War II 

Great Terror, lviii, 71, 139, 392, 397, 759; end 
of, 755; effect of, on non-Russian nationali- 
ties, 164, 172, 196; and technology, 626 



1029 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Grebenshchikov, Boris, 396 

Greece, 49, 80; as importer of Soviet gas, 508 

Greek philosophy, 7 

Greek Russians, 27 

Grenada, 418, 440 

Gribachev, Nikolai, 389 

Grishin, Viktor V., 305 

Gromyko, Andrei, 410 

Grossman, Vasilii, 390 

gross national product (GNP), 47, 273, 477, 
481, 609; military share of, 493 

Ground Forces (see also under name of service), 
lxxvi, 661, 672, 676, 677, 697, 705-10, 702, 
714, 718, 719, 725, 731, 750; Air Defense 
of Ground Forces, 708; Chemical Troops, 
708-10; combined arms army, 705-6; con- 
scripts in, 743; deployment of, 727; Engineer 
Troops, 708-9; Frontal Aviation under, 711; 
general organization of, 703; in General 
Staff, 705; in Ministry of Defense, 702, 705; 
mission of, 678-79; motorized rifle division, 
706; Motorized Rifle Troops, 706-7; polit- 
ical influence of, 705; Rocket Troops and 
Artillery, 707-8; Signal Troops, 708-9; sta- 
tioned in Eastern Europe, 728; tank army, 
706; Tank Troops, 707; uniforms and rank 
insignia of, 737-39 

Group of Soviet Forces in Germany, 728, 730, 
877 

Groznyy, 503 

GRU. See Main Intelligence Directorate 
"Guidelines for the Stabilization of the Econ- 
omy and Transition to a Market Economy": 
description of, lxi-lxii; phases of, lxi; reform 
under, lxi 

Guinea, 438, 614; priviliged affiliation of, with 

Comecon, 616 
Guinea-Bissau, 616 

Gulag. See Main Directorate for Corrective 

Labor Camps 
Gulf Stream, 102 
Gumilev, Nikolai S., 381 
Guyana, 614 

Habomai Island, 428 
Habsburgs, 31 
hajj, 193 

Hanseatic League, 8 
Harbin, 44 

hard currency, 501, 546, 591, 613; acquisition 
of, lxiii-lxiv; balance of trade, 613, 614; Come- 
con dependence on, 862; debt, lxiv; debt, at- 
tempt to reduce, 592, 604, 607; denned, 591; 
earnings, of exporting enterprises, 599; fuel ex- 
ports to earn, 605, 606-7, 609, 615, 618; loans 
for, 592; methods of acquisition, 591, 592; need 
for, 592, 606; responsibility of heads of minis- 
tries and enterprises for. 599 



Health, Ministry of, 263; emergency first-aid 
facilities operated by, 266; "fourth depart- 
ment" of, 268; psychiatric hospitals operated 
by, 268, 782; quotas and standards devel- 
oped by, 263 

health care, 121, 262-73; access to, in Russian 
Empire, 243; access to, in Soviet Union, 243; 
alcoholism treatment in, 270; annual bud- 
get for, 264; bribes for, 269, 271; of cancer 
patients, 271; centralization of, 263; of chil- 
dren, 266; death, causes of, 269; death rates, 
269; of elite, 268-69; emergency, 266-67; 
expansion of fee-for-service, 273; facilities, 
263, 264; and family size, 125; free, guaran- 
teed by Constitution, 243; hospitalization, 
265-66; influence of party on, 263; inpatient, 
265-66; under Khrushchev, 243-44; nega- 
tive trends in, causes of, 270-71; negligence 
in, 271; in the 1970s and 1980s, 269-73; 
overbureaucratization, 263-64, 271; pay- 
ment for routine, 269, 271; percentage of 
GNP spent on, 273; polyclinics, 263, 264; 
provision of, 263-69; psychiatric, 263; qual- 
ity of, lxv; quantitative expansion of, 262, 

263, 273; quotas and standards for treat- 
ment, 263; of railroad workers' union, 264; 
reform of, 263, 272-73; in rural areas, 269, 
273, 520; as service in unofficial economy, 
456; sick leave, 264-65, 276; and social po- 
sition, 223; socialized, in practice, 268; so- 
cialized, principles of, 262-63, 268; staff, 

264, 273; statistics on, 268, 269; in urban 
areas, 269; under Stalin, 243-44, 262; of 
women, 266; workplace clinic, 264 

health care professionals: training of, lxv 
Heavy Machine Building, Ministry of, 496 
Hebrew, 201, 205 

Helsinki Accords, 90, 92, 338, 421; as source 

of Warsaw Pact erosion, 889 
Helsinki watch groups, 197 
Hercegovina, 37 
Hermitage Museum, 396 
Heroine Mother medal, 236 
Higher and Specialized Secondary Education, 

Ministry of, 636 
Higher Intelligence School, 778; curriculum, 

778 

Higher Party School, 321 
Hill, Ronald J., 297 
Himalaya Mountains, 108 
Hindu Kush, 161 

Hitler, Adolf, 55, 392, 699; Comintern sup- 
port for, 72 
Holiday of Learning, 254 
Holland, 20 
Holy Alliance, 29 
Holy Roman Empire, 20 
Holy Synod, 22, 36, 186 
Horn of Africa, 439 



1030 



Index 



Horowitz, Vladimir, 395 

hospitals (see also clinics, health care, polyclinic 
complexes), 263; inefficiency of, 266; inpa- 
tient care, 265-66; lack of emergency fa- 
cilities in, 266-67; number of, 265; official 
specifications for length of stay in, 265-66; 
psychiatric, 267, 268, 782; shortage of mod- 
ern medical equipment in, 271; urban com- 
plexes, 265 

"hot line," 87 

Hough, Jerry F., 343 

housing supply: allocation of, 222-23; effect of, 
on family size, 125; planned increase in, 481; 
problems with, 93; rationing of, 456; in rural 
areas, 223, 520; shared, 223; shortage, 122; 
in urban areas, 223 

Hua Guofeng, 426 

Hungarian People's Army, 881 

Hungarian Revolution, 86, 880-81 

Hungarians, 8 

Hungary, 9, 31, 101, 414, 425, 474, 552, 581, 
762, 877, 882, 885; anti-Soviet uprising of 
1956, 86, 424-25, 682; contributions of, to 
Soviet chemical industry, 503; convertibil- 
ity of currency of, 866; de-Stalinization in, 
879-80; labor transfers from, 870; as mem- 
ber of Comecon, 601, 854; Mongol invasion 
of, 9; occupation of, by Red Army, 877; 
revolution of 1956-57, 880-81, 882; revo- 
lution of 1989, lix; satellite communications 
hookup to, 582; Soviet forces stationed in, 
728; Soviet influence over, 423; Soviet in- 
vasion of, 419, 682, 699; Soviet relations 
with, 407; Soviet treaty with, 877; Soviet 
withdrawal of forces from, 444 

Huns, 5, 160 

Hunter's Sketches (Turgenev), 39 
Husak, Gustav, 892 

hydroelectric generation, 510; location of plants 

for, 510, 511 
hydrofoils, 545, 570, 572 

Iakovlev, Aleksandr N., 299, 300; resignation 

by, from CPSU, lxviii 
Iakovlev, Ivan, 794 
Ianaev, Gennadii I., lxxi, lxxix 
Iankilevskii, Vladimir, 397 
Iaroslav the Wise (Prince); accomplishments of, 

7 

Iazov, Dmitrii T., lxxix, 663, 729 
Ibero-Caucasian language, 156 
Iceland, 423 

Ideological Department (CPSU), 247, 300, 374; 
censorship regulated by, 374; function of, 
373-74; role of Glavlit under, 374 

ideology, 307, 731; role of, 281-82; and science, 
633-34; as source of legitimacy, 288 

Il'ichevsk, 575 



Imperial Army, 698; backwardness of, 35-36 
imperialism, 655 

imports: of agricultural products, 609; attempts 
to reduce, 592, 607; of chemicals, 608, 610; 
of consumer goods, 611, 615; of food, 614; 
of grain, 608; of high technology, 609, 615; 
of industrial equipment, 608, 609, 611; of 
machinery, 615; of metals, 608, 610; of 
minerals, 614; restrictions on, 593; of ships, 
611; from socialist countries, 592; of textiles, 
610, 611, 615; of Western technology, 467, 
592, 606; from Yugoslavia, 603-4 

incentive system, 466 

income, 220-21, 471; hierarchy, 220; highest 
salaries, 220; lowest salaries, 220-21; and 
prestige, 224; salary ratio, 220; and social 
position, 219-22; unofficial, 221-22; wage 
differentiation, 213 

India, 37, 86, 99, 116, 435-36, 441; Soviet 
arms bought by, 614; Soviet economic and 
military assistance to, 435; Soviet relations 
with, 429, 433, 435; Soviet technology trans- 
fer to, 435-46; Soviet trade with, 612, 614, 
615; state visit by Gorbachev to, 436 

Indian Ocean squadron, 727 

Indian-Pakistani war, 432, 436 

individual enterprises, 92; khozraschet under, 
466, 468 

Indochina, 81 

Indonesia, 437, 614 

industrial centers, 485, 488-90; Donbass, 485; 
geographic expansion of, 488-90; Kursk, 
485; locating, 485; Magnitogorsk, 485; Mos- 
cow, 485 

industrial complexes, 467, 488-90, 491-92; 
agro-industrial, 491; chemical and timber, 
491; construction, 491; description of, 489, 
491; fuel and energy, 491; light industry, 
491; location of, 488-89; machine building, 
491; metallurgy, 491 

industrial cooperation agreements, 605 

industrial development, lxxvii, 42 

industrial enterprises, 641 

industrialization, 125, 127, 397; under Alex- 
ander III, 486; of animal husbandry, 538; 
and gender roles, 230; regimentation and, 71 

industrial ministries: abolished by Khrushchev's 
economic reform, 466; reinstituted by Brezh- 
nev, 466, 627 

industrial planning, 492; for metallurgy, 499 

industrial production, 472; examples of, 487-88; 
gross, under Second Five- Year Plan, 473; 
growth of, 481; problems with, under Gor- 
bachev, lxii; Soviet share of world, 451, 487 

industrial research and design system: concen- 
trations of, 635-36; design bureaus in, 494; 
improvement of, problems with, 495; insti- 
tutes in, 494; problems with, 494; research 
facilities in, 494 



1031 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



industry: under Catherine the Great, 486; cen- 
tralized plans in, 93, 485, 486; decrease in 
output during World War II, 77-78; develop- 
ment of, 486-87; defense, 457; equipment and 
machinery for, 495, 602, 606, 608; expansion 
of, 488; growth in, 475, 481; heavy, 478, 486, 
487, 501-2, 627; history of, 486, 488; impact 
of emancipation of serfs on, 486; importance 
of, 485; Khrushchev's reforms in, 88, 486; 
kinds of, 452; location of, 488-89; moderni- 
zation in, 485; nationalization of, 472, 487; 
number of enterprises and production associ- 
ations, 453; output of, 453; party policy state- 
ments on, 492; under Peter the Great, 486; 
priority of, for allocation of materials, 457; 
raw materials for, 487-88; reform of, 492-93; 
resources for, 487-91 

industry, heavy, lviii, lxxvii 

infant mortality, 93, 99, 116-18; distribution 
of, 116-18; increases in, 244, 269, 270; rea- 
sons for, 118 

information transfer, 642-45 

Ingria, 21 

inheritance of property, 235 

inland waterways, 545, 566-70; amount of cargo 
carried on, 566; canals, 545, 566; categories 
of, by depth, 567-68; development of, 566-67; 
lakes, 545, 566; length of, in operation, 566; 
major, 568; passenger transportation on, 566, 
570; planning for, 566; reconstruction of, after 
World War II, 567; reservoirs, 566; river 
ports and facilities, 569-70; rivers, 545, 566; 
system of, 567-69 

innovation, 637-42; defined, 637; funding for, 
640; in a market economy, 637-38; organiza- 
tional separation and, 638-39, 640; pricing 
policies and, 638; problems in, 637-40; as 
reaction to backwardness, 640; response to 
problems with, 640; in the Soviet economy, 
638 

In Search of Melancholy Baby (Aksionov), 381 
Institute for Nuclear Research, 860 
Instrument Making, Ministry of, 496 
intelligence gathering, 778-81; active measures, 
779-80; under detente, 778; by Eastern Eu- 
ropean countries, 780; electronic espionage, 
779; influence of, on foreign policy, 780-81; 
rezidenty engaged in, 778; on Western tech- 
nology, 778 
intelligentsia, lxv, 39, 21 1 , 216, 370; and the 
arts, 397; Bolshevik, 213; description of, 212; 
income of, 214, 220; as nonmanual laborers, 
215; perpetuated by education system, 218; 
position of children of, 211 
interbranch scientific-technical complex 
(MNTK), 499; components of, 641; defined, 
641-42; Mikrokhirurgiia glaza, 642; mission 
of, 642; number of, 641; problems with, 642; 
Rotor, 642 



Interim Agreement on the Limitation of Stra- 
tegic Offensive Arms, 92, 416, 442, 687 

Interior, Ministry of the (tsarist), 35; State 
Police Department under, 757 

intermediate-range nuclear forces: control of, 
689-91; defined, 689-90; reductions, 690 

Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) 
talks, 417, 444 

Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty 
(INF Treaty), 418, 419, 427, 690; contents 
of, 444, 705, 707; signing of, 444; stipula- 
tions of, 691 

Internal Affairs, Ministry of (MVD), 267, 268, 
301, 760, 761, 766, 781-94; Administrative 
Organs Department, 785; under Andropov, 
782; censorship by, 373; Criminal Investi- 
gation Directorate, 783; criticism of, 756; 
Directorate for Combating the Embezzle- 
ment of Socialist Property and Speculation, 
783; directorates, 783; functions of, 782-83; 
history of, 781-82; internal passport, 782; 
Internal Troops of, 722, 793; judicial sys- 
tem and, 786-90; KGB in, 782; labor camps 
under, 755, 790; leadership of, 783-85; local 
branches of, 783; Maintenance of Public 
Order Directorate, 783; mission of, 755, 771; 
Office of Recruitment and Training, 783; 
Office of Visas and Registration, 783; or- 
ganization of, 783, 784; party control of, 
lxxiv-lxxv, 785; party influence in, lxix; Po- 
litical Directorate, 785; predecessors of, 756- 
60; psychiatric hospitals under, 782; purge 
of, 763, 785; recruitment for, 785; role of, 
in coup of 1991, lxxx; role of, in leadership 
succession, 756; successor to NKVD, 782 

internal passport, 782 

internal security police {see also Committee for 
State Security) 284; under Andropov, 762- 
63; under Brezhnev, 762-63, 786; compo- 
nents of, 755; under Gorbachev, 763-65; 
under Khrushchev, 760-62 

internal security troops, 790-93 

Internal Troops, lxxvi, 697, 722-23, 794, 747, 
756, 793; composition of units, 794; con- 
scripts in, 794; established, 793; mission of, 
722, 794; number of, 722; training, 794; uni- 
forms and rank insignia of, 739; wartime 
missions of, 722-23, 794 

International Bank for Economic Cooperation, 
869 

International Department (CPSU), 35, 403, 
404, 404, 414, 779; active measures by, 780; 
focus of, 407; responsibilities of, 407; sup- 
port of, for nonruling Communist parties 
abroad, 407 
international front groups, 407, 410, 779 
International Information Department (CPSU), 
374, 404; functions of, 407 



1032 



Index 



International Investment Bank, 866 
International Monetary Fund (IMF), 619 
international strategic concerns, 681-85; mili- 
tary, 684-85 
Interrepublican Economic Committee, lxxxi 
Intersputnik, 582-85 

Inturist. See State Committee for Foreign 
Tourism 

Iran, 29, 37, 38, 48, 50, 101, 153, 155, 157, 
171, 176, 431-32, 569, 593; American and 
British diplomatic support for, 79-80; inva- 
sion of, by Iraq, 431; role of, as military 
power, 430; Soviet arms agreements with, 
431; Soviet relations with, 431-32; Soviet 
trade with, 612, 613, 618 

Iranians, 5, 155, 156, 171 

Iran-Iraq War, 432; Soviet goals in, 432 

Iraq, 171, 431-32, 582, 603; invasion of Iran 
by, 431; invasion of Kuwait by, lx; Soviet 
arms transfers to, 431, 614, 616; Soviet trade 
with, 612, 616; ties to Comecon, 616, 855; 
withdrawal of, from Baghdad Pact, 431 

Irkutsk, 493, 578, 585 

iron ore, 112, 489 

irrigation projects, 529; effects of, 529 
Irtysh River, 14, 109, 567 
Iskra (Spark), 43 

Islam: beliefs, 193-94; conversion of Central 
Asians to, 192; defined, 193; duties in, 193; 
mullahs, 193-94, 195; number of believers, 
184, 191; official recognition of, in Russia, 
175; origins of, 192; Quran, 192; shahada, 
193; Shia, 157, 159, 194; Soviet policy 
toward, 200-201; "spiritual directorates," 
192; Sufi, 195; Sunni, 157, 159, 181, 182, 
184, 194 

ispolkom (executive committee); defined, 364; 

size of, 364-65 
Israel, 413, 433; emigration to, lxxiv 
Istanbul, 186 

Italy, 50; contributions of, to Soviet chemical 
industry, 503; as importer of Soviet gas, 508, 
581, 609; as member of Cominform, 414; 
Russian military campaign in, 28 

Ivan I: cooperation of, with Mongols, 12 

Ivan III, 13, 139; expansion of Russia by, 12; 
use of title tsar by, 12 

Ivan IV ("the Terrible"), 13-14; break with 
boyars, 14; division of Muscovy by, 14; psy- 
chological profile of, 13; series of reforms 
begun by, 13 

Ivan V, 20, 23 

Ivan VI, 23 

Izvestiia (News), 585, 597, 600; circulation of, 

380; focus of, 380 
Izvol'skii, Aleksandr P., 48 



Jackson-Vanik Amendment, 608 



Jamaica, 614 
Janata Party, 436 

Japan, 41, 50, 433, 457, 477, 509, 539, 569, 
623; Anti-Comintern Pact signed by, 73; 
contributions of, to Soviet chemical indus- 
try, 503; involvement of, in Russian Civil 
War, 61, 63; Northern Territories (Kuril Is- 
lands) ceded to Soviet Union by, 77, 428; 
as power under Meiji Restoration, 32; rail 
service to, 558; role of, in putting down 
Boxer Rebellion, 44; Russian dealings with, 
48; in Russo-Japanese War, 44-45; Soviet 
trade with, 605, 610-11; victory of, over 
China, 44 

Japan, Sea of, 529, 570; ferry on, 575 

Jaruzelski, Wojciech, 425 

Jassy, Treaty of, 24 

Jehovah's Witnesses, 191 

Jewish (Y evreyskaya) Autonomous Oblast, 180 

Jews, 152, 159, 164, 173, 174, 177-81; as 
Bolsheviks, 322; Bund founded by, 42; dis- 
crimination against, 48, 78, 179, 212, 219; 
distribution of, 180; effect of German inva- 
sion on, 180; emigration of, 124, 608; ex- 
pulsion of, from Russia, 178; in higher 
education, 181; history of, 177-78; killing 
of, 179; language of, 180; as members of 
CPSU, 180, 181, 323-24; migration of, to 
Poland, 178; national dissent movement of, 
197, 205; Nazi genocide of, in Soviet Union, 
76; occupations of, 178; opportunities for, 
in early Soviet state, 179-80; oppression of, 
178; Pale of Settlement and, 24, 178-79; po- 
groms against, 46, 179; population of, 179, 
180; in Russian Empire, 24, 36; as scientific 
workers, 181; social position of, 219; Soviet 
concessions to, 205; urbanization of, 139, 
180-81 

Johnson, Lyndon B., 686 

joint enterprises, 594; with Japan, 611 

joint ventures, 502, 608; with China, 604; law 
on, 599, 618; number of, 599; obstacles to, 
599; purpose of, 599; Western interest in, 599 

Jordan, 432, 433 

journalists: number of, 378; party membership 
of, 378; training of, 378 

journals, 381-82; circulation of, 381; controver- 
sial articles in, 381; party control of, 381; 
rehabilitation of writers in, 381-82; "thick," 
39 

Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow (Radi- 

shchev), 26 
Juan Carlos (King), 422 
Judaism (see also Jews), 184; Soviet hostility 

toward, 201 
judicial system: abuses of, 789; party influence 

in, lxix 

judiciary, 330, 359, 787-88; lay assessors, 359, 
788; elected judges, 359, 787-88 



1033 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



"July Days," 58, 59 
June 1967 War, 91, 433 
Justice, Ministry of, 756, 788 

Kabakov, Il'ia, 397 
Kabardian-Balkars, 184 
Kabul, 430, 720 
Kadar, Janos, 892 
Kadets, 46 

Kaganovich, Lazar M., 84, 180, 315 
KAL 007 shoot-down, 384, 418, 714 
Kaliningrad, 101, 540 
Kalita (Ivan I), 12 
Kalmyk Autonomous Republic, 272 
Kalmyks, 164, 167, 184 
Kama automotive plant, 498 
Kama River, 122, 181, 182, 567, 568 
Kamchatka Peninsula, 104, 139 
Kamenev, Lev B., 65, 66, 180; accused of mur- 
dering Kirov, 70; in show trials, 70 
Kansko-Achinsk, 509, 510, 511 
Kapto, Aleksandr S., 300 
Karaganda, 166, 501; coal reserves in, 508 
Karakalpak Autonomous Oblast, 162 
Karakalpaks, 162, 163 
Kara-Kirgiz Autonomous Republic, 167 
Karakum Canal, 527 

Karelian Autonomous Republic, 362, 363 
Karelians, 184 

Karelo-Finnish Republic, 362 

Karmal, Babrak, 434 

Karpov, Vladimir, 389 

Kashka Darya, 527 

Kashmir, 435, 436 

Katushev, Konstantin F., 600 

Kazakh Autonomous Republic, 164, 167 

Kazakh Republic, 87, 102, 107, 110, 145, 159, 
160, 166, 527, 561; agriculture in, 532; coal 
reserves in, 508; industry in, 497, 501; legal 
age for marriage in, 232; metal industry in, 
502; nationalist movement in, 204; nation- 
alities in, 164-66, 177, 362; party appara- 
tus in, 307, 308; roads in, 562; virgin land 
campaign in, 475, 522 

Kazakhs, lxvi, 137, 160, 162, 163-67; alphabet 
of, 166; distribution of, 164-66; emigration of, 
164; grievances of, 204; in higher education, 
166; history of, 163-64; language of, 166; as 
members of CPSU, 166-67; as minorities in 
Kazakh Republic, 197, 362; national resur- 
gence of, 164; population of, 164; rebellions 
of, against Russian rulers, 164; Russian con- 
trol over, 163-64; as scientific workers, 166; 
under Soviet rule, 164; urbanization of, 166 

Kazakhstan, 161, 164, 362; economic region, 
503, 511 

Kazakh Upland, 104 

Kazan', 108, 497 



Kazan' Horde, 181, 183 
Kennan, George F., lxxviii 
Kennedy, John F., 86 
Kenya, 438 

Kerblay, Basile, 220, 224 
Kerch', 540 

Kerensky, Aleksandr, 58, 59; countercoup at- 
tempted by, 60 

KGB. See Committee for State Security 

Khabarovsk, 557, 578, 585 

Khar'kov, 497, 557 

Khazan' Khanate, 14, 175 

Khazars, 5; converted to Judaism, 178; expelled 
by Oleg, 5 

Kherson, 124 

Khiva {see also Khorzem), 160, 161, 162 
Khmel'nyts'kyi, Bohdan, 18 
Kholmsk, 575 

Khomeini, Sayyid Ruhollah Musavi (Ayatol- 
lah), 432, 682 

Khorzem (see also Khiva), 162 

khozraschet (self-supporting operating opera- 
tions), 466, 468 

Khrushchev, Nikita S., 56, 89, 306, 315, 342, 
379, 392, 760; agricultural problems under, 
93, 522; agricultural reform under, lviii, 
87-88, 522, 529, 533; antireligions campaign 
under, 199, 201; authority of, 84-85; avoid- 
ability of war, 661; background of, 82; 
Comecon under, 860; consolidation of power 
by, lviii, 84, 288; cult of, 291; cultural thaw 
under, 372; economic agreement signed with 
Afghanistan, 434; economic assistance of, to 
Turkey, 431; economic policies of, 476; eco- 
nomic reforms under, 84, 92, 310, 312, 466, 
729; education programs established under, 
243-44; elected first secretary, 82; foreign 
policy under, 85-87; health care programs 
established under, 243-44; industrial reform 
under, 476, 486; internal security under, 
755, 762; involvement of, in Africa, 438; 
KGB under, 772; meeting of, with Eisen- 
hower, 86; meeting of, with Kennedy, 86; 
merger-of-nationalities policy, 196, 197; mili- 
tary force reductions by, 691; military- 
political relations under, 729; nationalities 
policies under, 196-97; nuclear war viewed 
by, 656, 670; ouster of, 56, 88, 476, 662, 
782, 861; and peaceful coexistence, 85, 86, 
303; and polytechnical education, 246; 
Presidium's attempt to remove from office 
in 1957, 84; railroads under, 553; relations 
with India under, 435; reorganization of 
security police under, 760; rivalry of, with 
Malenkov, 82; "secret speech" of, 82-84, 
295, 305, 627, 765, 879; science reforms 
under, 627; virgin land campaign of, 87, 
303, 475; visit of, to Yugoslavia, 424; welfare 
programs established under, 243-44 



1034 



Index 



Kiev, 5, 9, 18, 122, 138, 497, 557; domina- 
tion of Kievan Rus' by, 6-8; international 
airport, 578; invasion by Mongols, 9; Ortho- 
dox church in, 188-89; Jewish community 
in, 178, 180 

Kievan Rus', 5, 7, 9, 12, 138, 139, 141, 144- 
45, 147, 174; achievements of, 4; anniver- 
sary of adoption of Christianity by, 205; 
Christianized under Vladimir, 7; decline of, 
8; destruction of, 3, 4-5, 8-9; domination 
of, by Kiev, 6-8; founding of, 5, 6; Jewish 
community in, 178; legacy of, 5, 10; Mon- 
gol invasion of, 9, 10, 12; Muscovy as heir 
of, 3; organization of, 7; origins of, 3, 4; prin- 
cipalities of, 6; Russian Orthodox Church in, 
186; society of, 7-8; successors to, 8-9; Varan- 
gians in, 5 

Kipchak tribes, 175 

Kirgiz, lxvi, 160, 161, 162, 163, 166, 167-69, 
174; alphabet of, 168; collectivization of, 168; 
distribution of, 168; emigration of, 167; ety- 
mology of, 167; grievances of, 204; in higher 
education, 169; history of, 167; language of, 
168-69; legal age for marriage in, 232; as 
members of CPSU, 168, 169, 324; as minori- 
ties in Kirgiz Republic, 197; national resur- 
gence of, 168; population of, 168; rebellion 
of, against Soviet rule, 168; Russian conquest 
of, 167; as scientific workers, 169; under 
Soviets, 167; urbanization of, 169 

Kirgiz Autonomous Oblast, 167 

Kirgiz Autonomous Republic, 162, 164, 167, 
168 

Kirgizia, 167, 362 

Kirgiz Republic, 102, 121, 159, 160, 162, 169, 
388; families in, 236; major cities in, 169; 
nationalist movement in, 204; nationalities 
in, 168, 183; party apparatus in, 308 

Kirilenko, Andrei P., 94, 315 

Kirishi, 115 

Kirov, Sergei, 759; assassination of, 70, 759 

Kirovabad, 159 

Kirovakan, 108, 154 

Kirov Theater, 393 

Kishinev, 175 

Klaipeda, 540, 575 

Klimov, Elem, 390, 392 

Kokand, 160, 161 

Kokand Khanate, 167 

Kokovtsev, Vladimir N., 47 

Kola Peninsula, 104, 423; chemical industry 

in, 503; metal industry in, 502 
Kolbin, Gennadii, 307 
kolkhozy. See collective farms 
Komi, 184, 581 

Komsomol, 229-30, 246, 248, 308, 310, 358, 
731, 761, 783; endorsement for university 
admission, 258; KGB lectures to, 772-74; 
members in armed forces, 733; military 



training of, 739; quota for deputies to Con- 
gress of People's Deputies, 348; recruitment 
for KGB from, 770; schools administered by, 
320 

Komsomol' skaia pravda (Komsomol Truth), 380 
Komsomol'sk-na-Amure, 493, 557 
Korea, 41, 42, 44, 48 
Korean War, 81, 475 
Kornilov, Lavr, 59 
Kornilov revolt, 59 

Kosygin, Aleksei N., 88, 436; economic reform 
program of, 92, 466; as prime minister, 
88-89 

Kozlov, Aleksei, 396 

kraia (territorial divisions), 102, 293, 308, 361, 
364, 374; Brezhnev's Food Program in, 524; 
KGB administrations in, 766 

Krasnaia zvezda (Red Star), 380 

Krasnoyarsk, 525, 527, 567, 585 

Krasnoyarskiy Krai, 536 

Kremenchug, 498 

Kremlin, 15, 769 

Kriuchkov, Georgii, 309 

Kriuchkov, Vladimir A., lxxv, lxxix, 765, 777, 
781 

Krivoy Rog, 488, 501; reduction of resources 
in, 488 

Krokodil (Crocodile), 381 

Kronshtadt Rebellion, 63, 286; and war com- 
munism, 64 

Kruglov, Sergei, 761 

Kuchuk-Kainarji, Treaty of (1774), 24; nulli- 
fied by Treaty of Paris, 36 

kulaks: deported to Siberia, 69, 520; described, 
69; Stalin's attempt to liquidate, 69, 213 

Kulikovo, 10 

Kunashir Island, 428 

Kurds, 194, 431 

Kuril Islands (Northern Territories), 77, 428, 
610 

Kursk campaign of World War II, 550 
Kushka, 101 
Kutaisi, 156, 498 

Kuwait, 430, 431, 432; invasion of, by Iraq, lx 
Kuybyshev, 108, 124 
Kuzbass, 501, 509; coal reserves in, 508 
Kuznetsov, Vasilii, 352 

labor, 454-56; compulsory, under Stalin, 455; 

nonmanual strata, 215; resources, in Corae- 

con, 870; strikes by, lxxiv 
laboratories: branch, 636; problem, 636 
labor camps (Gulag): administered by MVD, 

755, 790; administered by NKVD, 759 
labor force. See work force 
Labor Savings and Consumer Credit Bank, 458 
labor unions, 456 
Labytnangi, 558 



1035 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Ladoga, Lake, 5, 562 
Lamaism, 184 

land: agricultural, 526; arable, 526, 529; na- 
tionalization of, 472; redistribution of, 58; 
use, 525-29 

Land and Liberty (Zemlia i volia), 41 

Lane, David, 232, 233 

language: Russian as dominant, 197-98; as tool 
of nationality policy, 197 

Laos, 414, 430; satellite communications hookup 
to, 582; Soviet economic relations with, 601, 
605, 612; ties to Comecon, 616, 855 

laser equipment, 499, 623 
'■ Latin America, 410, 412, 440-41, 571; food im- 
ported from, 614; KGB activities in, 780; 
under Khrushchev, 440; low priority of, 
under Stalin, 440; Soviet activities in, 441; 
Soviet influence in, 291, 441, 872; Soviet 
policy toward, 441; Soviet support for leftist 
groups in, 440; Soviet trade with, 613, 615- 
16 

Latvia, 73, 147, 179, 363; annexation of, Iviii, 
397, 473, 682; establishment of indepen- 
dence, 61; incorporation of, into Soviet 
Union, 150; independence of, lxxxi; Soviet 
invasion of, in 1939, 74, 550; uprisings in, 45 

Latvian Republic, lxx-lxxi, 102, 121, 123, 127, 
145, 188, 308, 526; agriculture in, 533; can- 
didates for Congress of People's Deputies, 
347; drainage projects in, 529; families in, 
236; legal age for marriage in, 232; migra- 
tion to cities in, 226; nationalist demonstra- 
tions in, 201; nationalities in, 146, 150; 
nationalist movement suppressed in, 759; 
party apparatus in, 307; religion in, 190, 
191; Russification of, 150-51 

Latvians, lxvi, 27, 36, 42, 149-51; in higher 
education of, 151; history of, 149-50; in- 
dependence movement of, 150; language of, 
150; major cities of, 150; as members of 
CPSU, 151; population of, 150; rebellion of, 
against Soviet rule, 150; as scientific workers, 
151; urbanization of, 150 

Lavrov, Petr, 41 

Law on People's Control, 360 

Law on State Enterprises (Associations), 468, 
459; described, 468-69, 641; khozraschet under, 
468 

Law on the State Border, 791 

Law on Universal Military Service (1967), 739, 

742-43, 749, 791 
League of Nations: joined by Soviet Union, 73 
League of the Militant Godless, 198 
League of the Three Emperors, 37, 38 
Lee, William T., 664 
"Left Opposition," 66 

legal codes, 788-89; civil, 788; criminal, 788- 
89; principle of analogy in, 789; of 1649, 17; 
Stalinist, 789 



legal profession, 788; advocates, 788; fees, 788; 
legal advisers (iuriskonsul'ty), 788; organiza- 
tion of, 788 

legal system: party control of, 787; party in- 
fluence in, lxix; party interference in, 789; 
pretrial detention, 789; trials under, 788, 789 

Legislative Commission, 25 

legitimacy, political, 288-91; defined, 288; 
diplomatic recognition as source of, 412; elec- 
tion as source of, 288; ideology as source of, 
288; party saturation as source of, 289; party 
schools as source of, 322; patriotism as source 
of, 289, 290-91; sources of, in communist 
party, 288-89; sources of, in democratic 
countries, 288; tradition as source of, 288, 
289; well-being as source of, 288 

Lena River, 18, 109, 567 

lend-lease agreement, 562, 577 

Lend-Lease Law (United States), 552 

Lenin, Vladimir I. (see also Bolsheviks, Com- 
munist Party of the Soviet Union), lvii, 71, 
303, 320, 623, 624, 648; April Theses of, 58; 
arts and media used by, to support com- 
munism, 371, 377; assassination attempt 
against, 63; background of, 58; as Bolshe- 
vik leader, 44, 55, 281, 697; call by, for over- 
throw of Provisional Government, 58; as 
chairman of Council of People's Commis- 
sars, 60; conception by, of communist party, 
282-88; constitution, understanding of role 
of, 332; control by, of arts and mass media, 
369, 370; control justified by, 281; criteria 
of, for party appointments, 314; criticism of, 
under glasnost', lxxii, 370, 382; cult of, 291; 
death of, 65, 66; Decree on Peace of, 401; 
differences of, with Marxism, 283; dislike of 
Stalin, 65; and education as political indoc- 
trination, 244, 245; electrification program 
of, 547; ethos of political thought of, 284; 
factions denounced by, 65; flight of, to Fin- 
land, 59; founding by, of Comintern, 62, 
414; founding by, of Russian Communist 
Party (Bolshevik), 281; and inevitability of 
war, 653; and international relations, 66-67; 
interpretation of Marxism, 65; as leader of 
Bolshevik Revolution, 281; as leader of 
Soviet state, 65; legacy of, 65, 394; and let- 
ters to the editor, 379; merger of nationali- 
ties, 196, 197; military theories of, 667; New 
Economic Policy (NEP) proposed by, 64, 
213, 472, 487; position of, in Bolshevik 
government, 60; science and technology 
under, 625; social system revolutionized by, 
213; stories about, used for political indoc- 
trination, 253; succession to, 288, 304; and 
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, 61; Vecheka under, 
755, 758 

Leninabad, 170 

Leninakan, 108, 154 



1036 



Index 



Leningrad {see also Petrograd, St. Petersburg), 
74, 112, 122, 124, 181, 257, 348, 554, 557, 
575, 626,767; apartment sharing in, 223, 
233; art in, 396; divorce rate in, 233; emer- 
gency health care in, 267; German siege of, 
75; industry in, 497; international airport, 
578; Kirov Theater, 393; music in, 395, 396; 
rate of premarital pregnancy in, 234; Rus- 
sian nationalism in, 205; in World War II, 
562 

Lenin Mausoleum, 729; ceremonial guard, 

723; Stalin's body removed from, 84 
Lenin's birthday (holiday), 246 
Lermontov, Mikhail, 38 
Lesotho, 438 

Letters Department (CPSU), 379 

letters to the editor, 381; departments for, 380; 
as influence on public opinion, 380; purpose 
of, 379; responses to, 380 

Liaison with Communist and Workers' Parties 
of Socialist Countries Department (CPSU), 
356, 404; Andropov as head of, 762; respon- 
sibilities of, 407 

Liaotung Peninsula, 44 

liberal arts: orthodox Marxist interpretation of, 

72; party control of, during 1930s, 71-72 
Liberman, Evsei, 92, 466 
Libya, 420, 430, 440, 582; military access to, 

727; Soviet arms bought by, 614, 779; Soviet 

arms deliveries to, 685 
Life and Fate (Grossman), 390 
life expectancy, 93, 99, 116; declines in, 244, 

269; low, causes of, 271 
Ligachev, EgorK., 300, 301, 522, 764 
Light Industry, Ministry of, 491 
Likhachev automotive plant, 497-98 
limited sovereignty. See Brezhnev Doctrine 
Limited Test Ban Treaty (1963), 87, 688 
Lipetsk, 497, 501 

literature, 388-90; age of realism in, 38-40; 
under Andropov, 388; under Brezhnev, 94, 
388; censorship of, 774; control of, 388; crit- 
ical realism in, 370; under Gorbachev, 
388-89; literary thaw, 388; as model for 
politicization of arts and mass media, 370; 
during NEP era, 67-68; under Nicholas I, 
31; party control of, 71-72, 370; qualities of, 
38; socialist realism in, 388; as source of pro- 
test, 369; taboo subjects, 389 

Literaturnaia gazeta (Literary Gazette), 380 

Lithuania, 3, 9, 10, 12, 14, 42, 73, 147, 179, 
308, 363; annexation of, lviii, 397, 474, 682; 
establishment of independence, 61; families 
in, 236; incorporation of, into Russian Em- 
pire, 147; incorporation of, into Soviet Union, 
148; independence of, lxxi; as potential suc- 
cessor to Kievan Rus', 10; Soviet invasion of, 
in 1939, 74, 550 

Lithuania, Grand Duchy of, 141, 145 



Lithuania Minor, 147 

Lithuanian Republic, lxx-lxxi, lxxix, 102, 121, 
123, 127, 254, 526, 575; agriculture in, 533; 
autonomy sought by, 362; candidates for 
Congress of People's Deputies, 347; Catho- 
lics in, 199-200, 202; drainage projects in, 
529; Helsinki watch group established in, 
197; infant mortality in, 116; Jewish com- 
munity in, 178; major cities in, 148; migra- 
tion to cities in, 226; nationalities in, 146, 
148; nationalist movement suppressed in, 
759; party apparatus in, 307; Roman Catho- 
lic community in, 190; secession by, lxxix 

Lithuanians, lxvi, 36, 147-49, 150, 151; dis- 
tribution of, 148; education of, 148; history 
of, 147; independence movement, 147-48; 
language of, 148; as members of Central 
Committee, 148; as members of CPSU, 148; 
national dissent movement of, 197; Poloni- 
zation of, 147; population of, 148; rebellion 
of, against Russian rule, 147; rebellion of, 
against Soviet rule, 148; as scientific workers, 
148; urbanization of, 148 

Litvonov, Maksim M., 73, 180 

Liubimov, Iurii, 394 

Living Church, 68 

living conditions, lxiv 

living standards, 451, 478; and availability of 
consumer goods, 486; effect of economic re- 
form on, 470; of farm workers, 320; planned 
improvement in, 481 

Livonia, 14, 21 

Livonian Confederation, 149 

Livonian Order of the Teutonic Knights, 149 

local wars, 682, 700 

Lomonosov, Mikhail V., 23 

London, 592 

London Straits Convention (1841), 32 
Long- Range Aviation, 710 
Luanda, Soviet military base in, 685 
Luk'ianov, Anatolii I., lxxix, 770 
Lunacharskii, Anatolii, 68, 72 
Lutheranism, 151, 191 
Luxembourg, 592 
L'vov, 581 

L'vov University, 258 
Lysenko, Trofim D., 78, 626 

MccGwire, Michael, 664 

machine-building and metal-working complex 
(MBMW), 493, 494, 495, 495-502, 496; 
contributions of, 496; cooperation of, with 
electronics industry, 499; locations of, 497; 
military production under, 493, 646; minis- 
tries in, 495-96; perestroika in, 496; planning 
and investment in, 496-97; status of, 495-96; 
structure of, 495-96; types of products in, 
495 



1037 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



machinery: export of, 613; import of, 611, 615 
Machine Tool and Tool-Building Industry, 

Ministry of the, 646 
Madagascar, 616 

magazines, 381-82; circulation of, 381; con- 
troversial articles in, 381; party control of, 
381; rehabilitation of writers in, 381-82 

magnetohydrodynamic power generation, 511 

Magnitogorsk, 509; metallurgical combines in, 
501; reduction of resources in, 488 

Magyars, 5 

Maiakovskii, Vladimir, 67 

Main Administration for Aviation Work and 
Transport Operations, 580 

Main Administration for Safeguarding State 
Secrets in the Press (Glavlit), 373; censor- 
ship coordinated for, 375, 774; distribution 
of representatives, 374; role of, 374; role of, 
in censorship process, 376 

Main Administration for State Insurance, 275 

Main Directorate for Corrective Labor Camps 
(Gulag), 790 

Main Directorate for State Security, 758 

Main Inspectorate, 702, 730 

Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), 409, 
719, 778 

Main Military Council, 700, 701; members of, 
701; responsibilities of, 701 

Main Military Procuracy, 756, 775, 787 

Main Organization and Mobilization Direc- 
torate, 743 

Main Personnel Directorate, 702 

Main Political Directorate of the Soviet Army 
and Navy, 376, 701, 730, 731, 785, 878; and 
Ministry of Defense, 702; and party control 
over the armed forces, 730-31, 733 

Main Repertory Administration (Glavrepert- 
kom), 391 

Makarenko, Anton S., 249 

Makat, 561 

Makeyevka, 501 

Malaia Gruzinskaia street, 397 

Malaya, 81 

Malaysia, 437; Soviet trade with, 612, 615 
Malenkov, Georgii M., 81, 82, 84, 85; eco- 
nomic policies of, 475; as general secretary, 
82; as prime minister, 82; resignation of, as 
prime minister, 82, 475-76; rivalry of, with 
Khrushchev, 82 
Mali, 616 

Malta Summit (1989), lx 

management: academy in Moscow, 599; skills, 

acquired from Western trading partners, 

608-9 
Manchuria, 42, 44, 48 
Manchus, 167 
manganese, 112 

manual laborers {see also workers, blue-collar), 
217 



manufactured goods: exports of, 605-6; imports 
of, 615 

Mao Zedong, 80, 86, 90, 426 

Marchuk, Gurii, 637 

Marcos, Ferdinand, 437 

marine transportation (see also under individ- 
ual means of transport): barges, 545; hydro- 
foils, 545; ships, 545 

Maritime Border Troops, 723 

Maritime Fleet, Ministry of the, 597 

maritime ports, 574 

Markov, Georgii, 389 

marriage, 125-27, 231-32; attitudes of non- 
Russian nationalities toward, 231; common- 
law, 235; and housing shortage, 232; legal 
age for, 231-32; of Muslim families, 232-33; 
pregnancy as cause of, 232; reasons for, 232; 
roles in, 232-33; roles in, of elite, 232; shar- 
ing of housework in, 232 

Marshall Plan, 80; Comecon formed as re- 
sponse to, 601; Soviet refusal of assistance 
from, 78, 474 

Marx, Karl, 44, 71, 332, 339, 472, 654 

Marxism, 44, 472; advocates of, 40; in Geor- 
gia, 155; as intellectually demanding theory, 
284; Lenin's alterations of, 283-84; Lenin's 
attempt to apply, to Russia, 282; rise of, 40- 
41; summary of, 283 

Marxism-Leninism, lxv, lxxv, lxxvi-lxxvii, 86, 
90, 291, 304, 423, 693; atheism in, 198; and 
constitution, 330, 335; defined, 65; charac- 
terized as outdated, by Gorbachev, lxxvii; 
as educational philosophy, 244, 245, 248; ef- 
fect of, on foreign policy, 402; history inter- 
preted by, 72; inculcation of ideals of, 262; 
international promotion of, 681; knowledge 
of, required for candidate degree, 260; law 
under, 786; lectures on, to armed forces, 731; 
means of production in, 214; military doc- 
trine of, 653, 654; modifications of, 290; 
ownership of means of production in, 452; 
party as sole interpreter of, 284, 289; renun- 
ciation of, by former CPSU members, lxviii; 
as social science, 289, 290; socialist realism 
and, 369, 372; as source of party legitimacy, 
290; in teacher education, 261; training in, 
312, 320-22; values of, spread by mass 
media, 377; war theory of, 654-59, 659-60 

Marxism-Leninism on War and the Army: nuclear 
war as legitimate continuation of politics, 
655, 657; nuclear weapons for fighting, 662 

Marxist-Leninist Teaching on War and the Army, 
657, 663; laws of war in, 658; relationship 
between weapons and victory, 659 

Marxist-Leninist vanguard parties, 414, 429 

Masliunikov, Iurii D., 346 

mass media (see also under individual media): 
administration of, 373-77; computers, 384- 
85; contacts by, with West, 419; control of, 



1038 



Index 



hindered by technological revolution, 369, 
384, 385; history of party control of, 369; 
investigative reports by, lxxii; journals, 370, 
381-82; Leninist principles for, 371-72; loss 
of control of, lxxiii; magazines, 370, 381-82; 
necessity of, to socialist system, 369-70; 
newspapers, 370, 377-81; party control of, 
373-74; party influence in, lxix; politiciza- 
tion of, lxxii, 370-73; radio, lxxii, 370, 382; 
restrictions on, lxxiii; revolution in, lxxii; 
television, 370, 382-84; themes in, 370, 373; 
video cassette recorders, 382-84 

Massawa, Soviet military base in, 685 

Master and Margarita, The (Bulgakov), 394 

maternity benefits, 243, 276 

maternity leave, 130, 276 

mathematics, 623 

Matrosov, Viktor, 791 

Matthews, Mervyn, 221, 222 

May Day, 246 

Mazepa, 141 

means of production: advantages of public 
ownership of, 463-64; and social class, 214; 
socialist ownership of, lxi, 452 

Meat and Dairy Industry, Ministry of the, 524 

Mecca, 192 

mechanization, 455, 479; workers' ability to 

deal with, 490 
Medical Troops, 739 
medicine, Soviet research in, 623 
Medina, 192 
Medish, Vadim, 260 

Mediterranean Sea, 430, 566, 570; nuclear-free 

zone, 691 
Mediterranean squadron, 727 
Medium Machine Building, Ministry of, 646, 

735 

Medvedev, Vadim A., 300 
Mendeleev, Dmitrii I., 625 
Mennonites, 191 

Mensheviks, 43, 58, 60; exile of, 65; in Geor- 
gia, 155 

merchant fleet (Morflot), 570-76; cruise ships 
of, 575; expansion of, 571; ferry lines, 575; 
freighters, Arctic, 572; freighters in, 571; 
growth of, 571; icebreakers, 572; initial de- 
velopments, 571-72; intelligence-gathering 
by, 576; operations, 572-76; size of, before 
1960, 671; standardization in, 572 

Mesopotamia, 153 

metallurgical industry, 22, 94, 492, 499-502, 
509; applications in, 500; automation in, 
496-97; bottlenecks in, 501; equipment in, 
500; imports for, 606; inconsistent record of, 
500; locations of combines, 501; military 
equipment produced by, 500; in nineteenth- 
century Russia, 33; nonferrous metals in, 501- 
2; origins of, 486; plans for, 499, 500-501; 
problems in, 496-97, 501; products of, 500; 



resources for, 489; serious obstacles in, 501; 
shortage of hard currency in, 501; support of, 
for heavy industry, 501-2; in twentieth-cen- 
tury Russia, 47 

Mexico, 441; ties to Comecon, 855 

Meyer, Alfred G., 286 

Michael, Grand Duke, 57 

microprocessors, 479 

Middle East, 50, 171; KGB-sponsored ter- 
rorism in, 779; main Soviet goal in, 430; 
military advisers in, 684, 700; Soviet diplo- 
matic relations in, 413, 432; Soviet influence 
in, 90-91; Soviet trade with, 615; strategic 
importance of, to Soviet Union, 430 

midwives, medical training for, 268 

migration, 130; and birth rate, 123; control 
over, 122; emigration, 124; impediments to, 
122; incentives, 123; influence of climate on, 
123; of peasants, 213; profile of migrants, 
122-23; rate of, 122-23 

Mikhalkov, Sergei, 389 

militarized police. See Border Troops, Internal 
Troops 

military (see also armed forces, Ministry of De- 
fense): budgets, 493, 733-34; design, 735; 
force requirements, 676; profession, 698; pro- 
tection of, from economic slowdown, 493; 
research, 627; role of, downgraded in state 
ceremonies, 729; schools, 698; share of gross 
national product, 493; threat assessments, 676 

military, minorities in, 746-47; control over, 
747; language and, 747; nationality conflict, 
746-47; as potentially unreliable, 747 

military, women in, 747-48; number of, 747; 
positions in, 747-48; volunteers, 747; in 
World War II, 747 

military academies: admission, 749; diplomas, 
749; examinations for, 749; Frunze Military 
Academy, 792; Lenin Military-Political Acad- 
emy, 792; necessity of, for promotion, 749; 
program, 749; research projects, 749 

military advisers to Third World: countries in, 
684-85; number of, 684 

military art, 668-675; combined arms concept, 
672, 677; components of, 654, 668-69; deep 
offensive operation theory, 672, 673, 888; de- 
fined, 666, 668-69; focus of, 666; principles 
of, 666, 668; revision of, 693; tactics in, 673-75 

military boarding schools, 748; cadets in, 748; 
enrollments, 257; purpose of, 257 

military commissariat. See voenkomat 

military conscripts, 742-48; alcoholism among, 
745; assignment of, 743; basic training, 745; 
bribes for deferment, 743; conscientious ob- 
jector status, 43-45; conscription period for, 
743; daily training of, 745-46; deferment, 
743; harvesting by, 746; hazing of, 745; in- 
duction of, 743, 745; number of, 739; pay, 
745; reenlistment rate of, 746; reserve officer 



1039 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



training program for deferred, 743; turn- 
over, 746 

military districts, 724, 725-27; as combined 
arms formations, 725; command of, 725; 
deployment of, 726; duties of, 725; organi- 
zation of typical, 726; personnel of, 725; as 
response to perceived threats, 725 

military doctrine (see also military science, mili- 
tary strategy): avoidability of war, 653-54, 661; 
basis of, in Frunze, 661; basis of, in Lenin, 
660-61; capitalist encirclement, 661; defense- 
oriented, lxxvii, 660, 675, 676; defined, 653; 
effect of, on arms control, 654; evolution of, 
660-62; on fighting a future world war, 661, 
663, 681; foundation of, in Marxism-Leninism, 
653; and inevitability of war between capital- 
ism and socialism, 653, 661; influence of, 653; 
in the late 1980s, 662-64; large forces in, 676; 
and military policy, difference between, 665; 
military-political component, 660, 664; mili- 
tary-technical component, 660; new concepts 
in, 663-64, 693; of nuclear war, 653-54, 662; 
and nuclear weapons, 643-54; as offensive, 660, 
675; offense-oriented, lxxvii; as party line on 
military affairs, 660; of reasonable sufficiency, 
663, 664, 676; in support of world socialism, 
681; two-camps concepts of, 661; victory orien- 
tation of, 660, 664, 673; war plans and, 675; 
and weapons programs, 664-65; Western con- 
sensus on, 664 

military equipment, 495; armored personnel 
carriers (APCs), 706-7; infantry fighting ve- 
hicle (IFV), 707; inventory of, 707; manufac- 
turing goals, 493-94; tanks, 707; weapons 
guidance systems, 499 

Military Industrial Commission (VPK), 491- 
92, 647, 734, 778 

military-industrial complex, 303, 493-94; de- 
sign in, 735; high technology in, 485; in- 
fluence of military-technical concepts on, 
666; keep-it-simple philosophy of, 494, 735- 
37; party influence on, lxxv; priority of, for 
resource allocation, 493; as resource drain, 
494; top-priority projects in, 493 

military industries, 734-35 

military insignia, 737-39; of Air Forces, 741; 
of Air Defense Forces, 741 ; of Ground Forces, 
740; of Naval Forces, 744; of Strategic Rocket 
Forces, 740 

military justice, 787 

military life: conditions, 745; discipline, 745; 

hazing in, 745 
military oath, 745 

military officers, 212, 748-50; assignment, 748; 

criminal offenses, 749; number of, 739, 748; 

pay, 749; perquisites, 749; prestige of, 748; 

promotion, 748-49; retirement, 749-50; 

training system, 748 
military operational art, 672-73; concepts shap- 



ing, 672; deep offensive operation in, 673, 
679, 692; defined, 669, 672 

military policy: arms control in, 685, 691; con- 
tinuity and consistency of, 666; defined, 653, 
665; large forces in, 676; influence of, 643; 
influence of nuclear weapons on, 665; and 
military doctrine, difference between, 665; 
military-political component, 665; and mili- 
tary strategy, connection between, 665; mili- 
tary-technical component, 665; modification 
of, 666; as political aim of the Soviet state, 
660; war plans and, 675 

military-political concepts, 656, 665-66; con- 
tinuity and consistency of, 666; and direc- 
tion of military technology, 664; influence 
of Marxism-Leninism on, 660 

military-political relations, 729-730; under 
Brezhnev, 729; under Khrushchev, 729; under 
Stalin, 729; and resource allocations, 729 

Military Procuracy, 739 

military production (see also military-industrial 
complex, Military Industrial Commission), 
734-35; management of, 736 

military research and development, 646-48; ac- 
cess of, to development facilities, 647; bu- 
reaucracy reduced in, 648; civilian facilities 
involved in, 646-47; coordinating agencies' 
function in, 647; Ministry of Defense facili- 
ties' function in, 646; design bureaus in, 735; 
effectiveness of coordination in, 648; effici- 
ency of, 646; high priority assigned to, 647; 
incremental approach to, 735; keep-it-simple 
philosophy of, 494, 735-37; machine-build- 
ing and metal-working ministries responsi- 
ble for, 646; political commitment to, 647; 
principal organizations involved in, 646-48; 
production goals in, 648; productivity of, 
647; quality control in, 648; technological es- 
pionage for, 737 

military reserves, 750 

military schools, higher (see also military acade- 
mies): admission, 748; cadets in, 748; cur- 
riculum, 748; women in, 748 

military science, 660, 666-75; defined, 653, 
666; and military doctrine, 669; origins of, 
667; principal components of, 666; scientific 
forecasting in, 667; theoretical basis for, 
lxxvi-lxxvii 

military service, 339 

military spending. See defense spending 

military strategic missions, 675; defensive, 
676-77, 680-81; defined, 675; formulation 
of, 675; interdependence between defensive 
and offensive, 67; offensive, 676-79; over- 
all, 676-77; Soviet vision of, 677 

military strategy, 660; against NATO, 887-88; 
ballistic missile defense, 671; based on worst- 
case scenario, 675, 676; conventional air 



1040 



Index 



operation, 679-80; defense-oriented, 676; 
defined, 665, 669; deterrence, 670; influence 
of nuclear weapons on, 665, 669, 675, 677; 
investigations of, 669; and military doctrine, 
669; and military policy, connection be- 
tween, 665; missions under, 676; new op- 
tions for, 671; nuclear deterrence as, 660, 
670; nuclear war-fighting as, 660; preemp- 
tive nuclear strikes as, 673; response to flex- 
ible response, 671; space warfare, 671; under 
Stalin, 669; subordinate role of, 667; uni- 
fied, 677; victory as goal of, lxxvi, 675; and 
the Warsaw Pact, 887-88 
Military Strategy (Sokolovskii), 662, 665, 670, 
680, 689 

military tactics, 666, 672, 673-75; basic com- 
bat actions, 673; defined, 669, 673; invasion 
of Afghanistan as test of, 675; nuclear 
weapons and, 673; orientation of, toward 
conventional weapons, 673-74; resurgence 
of, 675; Soviet principles of, 673 

military-technical concepts: influence of, on 
military-industrial complex, 666; prediction 
of, 667 

military-technical sciences, 666 
military technology, 623, 735-37 
military theater. See theater of military oper- 
ations 

military training: of conscripts, 742-48; prein- 

duction, 739-42 
Military Transport Aviation, 580, 711-12, 719; 

airlift capabilities of, 712; missions of, 711 — 

12; organization of, 712 
military uniforms, 737-39 
Mindaugas (King), 147 

ministerial system, 344-46; all-union ministries 
in, 344-45, 491; internal structures of, 345; 
party control of, 346; powers of ministries 
in, 345; republic, 491; union-republic minis- 
tries in, 344-45, 491 

ministries: military, 491, 493; reaction of, to 
economic reform, 467 

Minsk, 497, 578 

mir (commune), 34, 213 

Mir space station, 689 

missile defenses, 714-16; ABM system around 
Moscow, 715, 725-27; modernization of, 
715 

missiles, 891 

Mitterrand, Francois, 420 

modernization: in civilian industry, 485; in de- 
fense industry, 486; in industry, 485; pro- 
gress of, 4; under Stalin, 72 

Mohamad, Mahathir bin, 437 

Mohila (Metropolitan), 19 

Moldavian Autonomous Republic, lxx, 174, 
363 

Moldavian Railroad, 554 

Moldavian Republic, lxx, 74, 102, 122, 124, 



174, 188, 308, 363, 527; agriculture in, 534, 
536; autonomy sought by, 362; families in, 
236; legal age for marriage in, 232; major 
cities in, 175; nationalities in, 146, 174; party 
apparatus in, 307; population density, 124; 
Roman Catholic community in, 190 

Moldavians, lxvi, 173-75; alphabet of, 174, 
205; distribution of, 174; as ethnic Roma- 
nians, 173, 174; in higher education, 175; 
history of, 173-74; as members of CPSU, 

175, 324; language of, 174; national resur- 
gence of, 174, 205; population of, 174; as 
scientific workers, 175; urbanization of, 
174-75 

Molniia satellite system, 582; as "hot line" 
backup, 582; as spacecraft transmission sys- 
tem, 582 

Molotov, Viacheslav, 73, 81, 84 

Monastery of the Caves, 7 

Mongol Empire, 3, 160, 175 

Mongolia, 101, 414, 423, 427, 433; as burden 
on Comecon, 871; as member of Comecon, 
601, 603; power of, in Comecon, 871; satel- 
lite communications hookup to, 582; Soviet 
economic aid to, 591, 592, 605; Soviet forces 
stationed in, 728 

Mongol invasion, 9, 12, 145, 160, 171; and de- 
struction of Galicia-Volhynia, 9; and destruc- 
tion of Kievan Rus', 9, 10, 138; impact of, 
9-10 

Mongols, 181; Golden Horde, 9, 10; role of, 
in development of Muscovy, 10 

Montenegro, 49 

Moore, Barrington, 290 

Mordvinian Autonomous Oblast, 183 

Mordvinian Autonomous Republic, 183 

Mordvins, 183; alphabet of, 183; language of, 
183; population of, 183; religion of, 183 

Morocco, 614 

Morozov, Boris, 17 

mortality rate, 120-21; among males, 120; ef- 
forts to reduce, 121; impact of alcoholism on, 
130; increases in, 120; major determinants 
of, 121 

Moscow, 9-10, 12, 122, 124, 140, 180, 186, 
257, 314, 557, 561, 585, 626, 767, 792; art 
in, 396; Bolshevik control of, 60; Bolshevik 
government moved to, 61; Bolshoi Theater, 
393; emergency health care in, 267; as in- 
dustrial region, 33, 486, 497, 503, 514, 515; 
management institute established in, 599; 
missile site around, 680; music in, 395, 396; 
Napoleon's occupation of, 29; office space 
in, 599; Russian nationalism in, 205; Sher- 
emetevo Airport, 546; uprisings in, 45 

Moscow Air Defense District, 725-27 

Moscow Military District, 730 

Moscow Navigation Company, 570 

Moscow Railroad, 557 



1041 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Moscow Soviet, 59 

Moscow Summit: of 1972, 92; of 1988, 418, 419 

Moscow University, 23, 258-59, 770; School 
of Journalism, 378 

Moscow- Volga canal, 566 

Moscow- Vorkuta road, 558 

Mosfilm studios, 392 

Moskovskaya Oblast, 124 

Moskovskie novosti (Moscow News), 380-81 

mosques, 200-201 

most-favored-nation status, 608 

Mother (Gorky), 394 

Motherhood Medal, Second Class, 236 

Motorized Rifle Troops, 705-7; equipment of, 
706-7; organization of, 706-7; uniforms and 
rank insignia of, 738-39 

mountain zone, 104; described, 107-8; loca- 
tion, 107-8 

Mozambique, 414, 430, 438, 439-40; military 
advisers in, 684; Soviet military aid to, 
439-40, 684; Soviet military base in, 685; 
Soviet treaty with, 439; ties to Comecon, 
616, 855 

Mozambique National Resistance Movement 

(Renamo), 439 
Mufid-Zade, Dshamil, 397 
Muhammad, 192 

mujahidin (Afghan resistance), 435, 700, 711 
Mukden, 44 
Mukran, 575 
Munich, 73 

municipal government: civil defense in, 722 

Murmansk, 102, 122, 540 

Murmansk Railroad, 550 

Murmansk-Severomorsk, 727 

Muscovy, 10-19, 139, 186; development of, 
10-19; eastward expansion of, 18; expansion 
of, 14, 18-19, 101; as heir of Kievan Rus', 
3; historical characteristics that emerged in, 
3; influence of, on Russian and Soviet soci- 
ety, 10; influence of, on Soviet Union, lvii; 
as origin of Russian Empire, 3, 21; rise of, 
12; role of Mongols in developing, 10; Rus- 
sian lands annexed to, 12; war of, with 
Poland, 18, 141; war of with Sweden, 141; 
Westernization of, 18-19; territorial expan- 
sion of, 16; westward expansion of, 18-19 

music, 388, 394-96; classical, 395-96; control 
of, 395; critical realism in, 370; jazz, 396; 
metallisti (heavy-metal fans), 396; punki (punk 
rock fans), 396; rock and roll, 396; schools 
of, 247, 257 

Muslims (see also Islam), 168, 191-95; in Af- 
ghan war, 747; Azerbaydzhani, 153, 157; 
Central Asian, 159; Chuvash, 181; congre- 
gations of, 195; cultures of, 194; defined, 
193; differences between Shia and Sunni, 
194; discrimination against, 212; distribu- 
tion of, 194-95; divorce of, 233; duties of, 



193; ethnic differences, 194; execution of 
duties in Soviet Union, 193; exemption of, 
from military service, 162; families of, 212; 
languages of, 194; marriages of, 232-33; as 
members of CPSU, 324; mosques, 191-92; 
number of, 191 ; rate of abortion among, 234; 
Russian, 43; Shia, 157, 159; Soviet policy 
toward, 200-201; "spiritual directorates," 
192; Sufi, 195; Sunni, 157, 159, 181, 182, 
184; Tatars as elite, 176 

Mussolini, Benito, 392 

Mustafa-Zadek, Vadim, 396 

Mutual Balanced Forces Reduction (MBFR) 
talks, 692 

My Friend Ivan Lapshin (German), 392 



Naberezhnyye Chelny, 122, 498 
Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast, 158, 
202 

Nagy, Imre, 86, 424, 881 
Najibullah, Sayid Mohammad, 434 
Nakhichevan' Autonomous Republic, 158 
Nakhimov Naval School, 257, 748 
Nakhodka, 540 
Namibia, 438, 439 

Napoleon: defeat of Russians at Austerlitz and 
Friedland by, 28; defeat of, by Russians, 29; 
invasion of Russia by, 28-29; Russian alli- 
ance with, 28; Russian wars against, 27, 28 

Narva, 20 

nation, Stalin's definition of, 195 
National Air Defense Forces. See Air Defense 
Forces 

national assertiveness, 201-5; by Armenians, 
202; by Baltic nationalities, 201-2; by Cen- 
tral Asian nationalities, 204; by Russians, 
205; by Ukrainians, 202-4 

National Command Authority, 680 

national elan, 304 

Nationalist Party (China), 67 

nationalities, 102; under Brezhnev, 197; cul- 
tural concessions granted to, 196; dissent 
movement of 1970s, 197; factors influenc- 
ing position of, 137; impact of, on Soviet 
Union, 137-38; importance of language in, 
lxvii, 197; imposition of Russian language 
on, lxvii, 196, 197-98; intermarriage among, 
219; under Khrushchev, 196-97; major, in 
Soviet Union, 102; merger-of-nationalities 
policy, 196, 197; and nationality groups, 
135; patronage systems among, 219; posi- 
tion of, after coup of 1991, lxxxi; religion 
identified with, 198, 199-200; resistance of, 
to Russian language, 198; resistance of, to 
Soviet rule, lxvii; rights of, under Constitu- 
tion, 195; Russification of, 196; self-govern- 
ment of, 195; and social position, 218-19; 
Soviet policy on, 195-98; Stalin's definition 



1042 



Index 



of, 195; under Stalin, 196; struggle of, for 
independence, lxviii; union republics of, 196 
nationalities question: background of, 135; 
Gorbachev's assessment of, 135; increased 
animosity under Soviet rule, 135-37 
nationality problems, lvii, 3,27; ethnic diver- 
sity and, 27; in union republics, lxx 
nationalization: by Lenin, 213, 472 
national liberation movements, 697 
national security: and foreign policy, 401, 402; 
importance of heavy industry to, 487; po- 
litical and military aspects of, 663; Soviet 
military intervention in Eastern Europe for, 
682 

National Socialist German Workers' Party 
(Nazi Party): Comintern support for, 72 

National Union for the Total Independence of 
Angola (UNITA), 439 

natural resources (see also raw materials), 
112-13; exploration and development of, 
1 12; joint exploitation and development of, 
by Comecon, 868; major mineral deposits, 
114; fossil fuels, 112; Soviet imports of, 871 

Naval Aviation, 718, 727; aircraft carriers, 718; 
antisubmarine warfare by, 718; kinds of air- 
craft, 718; mission of, 718; as support for 
Naval Infantry, 718 

naval fleets (see also under individual fleets): 
composition of, 727; force of, 727; organi- 
zation of, 727 

Naval Forces (see also under individual branches), 
lxxvi, 570, 576, 672, 676, 677, 684, 697, 
716-19, 720; Coastal Defense Forces, 719; 
fleets, 727-28; flotillas, 727; general organi- 
zation of, 703; Main Staff of, 727; mission 
of, 678; Morflot as component of, 576; Naval 
Aviation, 718; Naval Infantry, 718-19; as part 
of strategic nuclear forces, 678; role of, 678; 
squadrons, 727-28; submarine forces, 716-18; 
uniforms and rank insignia of, 737-39; 
weapons of, 678 

Naval Infantry, 718-19, 727; components of, 
718; missions of, 718; ships and equipment 
of, 718-19 

naval squadrons (see also under individual 
squadrons), 727-28; forward deployments of, 
727-28 

Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact (1939), lviii, 

55, 73, 74, 77, 142, 148, 474, 550, 699 
Nechaev, Sergei, 40 
Nedelia (Week), 381 
Nehru, Jawaharlal, 435 

NEP era: art and literature during, 67-68; 
description of, 67-68; elite class developed 
in, 213; end of, 66; family under, 68; religion 
in, 68; security police under, 758 

Nerchinsk, Treaty of, 18 

Neryungri, 439, 558 

Netherlands, 581 



neutralism, 419, 420 
neutrality, 423; positive, 423 
neutron bomb, 444 
Neva River Basin, 5 

New Economic Policy (NEP), 65; abandoned, 
472; defined, 64; described, 472, 487; for- 
eign trade under, 593; introduced, 758; NEP 
man, 64; proposed by Lenin, 64, 472 
New Enterprise Law, 600 
New International Economic Order, 446 
newly industrialized countries, 430 
new Soviet man, 245, 281 ; as goal of party, 290 
newspapers (see also under name of individual 
paper), 377-81; all-union, 377-78, 379; cir- 
culation of, 378, 380; closed by Bolshevik 
government, 371; controlled by Bolshevik 
government, 371-72; focus of local, 379; let- 
ters to the editor in, 379-80; new formats 
and issues in, 378-79; number of, 377; 
proscribed topics, 379; style of reading, and 
party membership, 378; regional, 378, 379 
new thinking, 373, 654; and military policy, 
663 

New Zealand, 605 

Nicaragua, 90, 430, 440, 582; Soviet military 
aid to, 684; Soviet trade with, 612; ties to 
Comecon, 616, 855 

Nicholas I, 30-32, 33, 179; censorship under, 
30; death of, 32; emphasis of, on Russian 
nationalism, 30; foreign policy under, 31; 
suppression of revolutions by, 31; Third Sec- 
tion (secret police) under, 30, 757 

Nicholas II, 44, 46, 50, 392; abdication of, lvii, 
57; conduct of government handed to Alek- 
sandra, 57; duma formed by, 283; execution 
of, 63; involvement of, in World War I, 57 

Nigeria, 438; priviliged affiliation of, with 
Comecon, 616; Soviet trade with, 612, 613, 
615 

Nikon, 19 

Nikonov, Viktor P., 300 

Nineteenth Party Congress, 81, 637 

Ninth Chief Directorate (KGB): responsibility 
of, 767; Security Troops under, 793 

Ninth Five- Year Plan (1971-75), 476-77, 532 

Nixon, Richard M., 92 

Nizhnekamsk, 502 

Nizhniy Tagil, 501 

Nizovtseva, Alia A., 298 

NKVD, 758-59, 782; economic functions of, 
759; labor camps administered by, 759; pow- 
ers of, 759; role of, in Stalin's purges, 70, 
759; role of, in Trotsky's murder, 70 

Nobel Prize for Literature, lxxii 

Nobel Prize for Peace, lx, lxxiv 

nobility, 212 

Nobles' Land Bank, 35 

nomenklatura (appointment authority), lxxiv, 
301, 307, 311, 313-16, 348; Council of 



1043 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Ministers' authority of, 346; Council of 
Ministers selected by, 341; criteria of, 314; 
defined, 218, 313; economic, reduced under 
Gorbachev, 314; editorial staff selected 
under, 374; history of, 314; lists for, 314; of 
party, 340; and patron-client relations, 
313-14; for procuracy, 359; province-level, 
308; as source of party power, 282, 329; for 
science, 634; supervised by CPSU general 
secretary, 303; for Supreme Soviet, 358 

Nonaligned Movement, 434 

noncommissioned officers, 746; lack of, lxxvi; 
number of, 739; as percentage of armed 
forces, 746; training of, 746 

non-Russian nationalities: attitudes of, toward 
abortion, divorce, and marriage, 231; dis- 
crimination against, 212; urbanization of, 
219 

Noril'sk, 104 

North Africa, 430 

North America, 571, 680 

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 
lx, 420, 421, 422, 423, 430, 431, 444, 693, 
710, 750, 781, 891; arms reductions, 692; 
condemnation by, of Soviet invasion of Af- 
ghanistan, 434; Eastern Europe as buffer 
against, 728; flexible response concept 
adopted by, 662; formation of, 80; military 
strategy of, 679, 680; military strategy 
against, 679; nuclear weapons of, 680, 690, 
691; offensive against, 682; relations of, with 
Warsaw Pact, 403, 419; as target of war, 679; 
threat of, to Warsaw Pact, 891 ; Warsaw Pact 
as counterweight to, 875 

North Caucasus Military District, 727 

Northern Caucasus Railroad, 557 

Northern Fleet, 727 

Northern Group of Forces, 877 

Northern Lights pipeline, 581 

Northern Territories (Kuril Islands), 77, 428, 
610 

North Korea. See Democratic People's Republic 
of Korea 

North Sea, 423, 566, 680 

North Yemen. See Yemen Arab Republic 

Norway, 101, 422-23, 575 

Novgorod, 5, 8, 12; ascendancy of, 8; charac- 
ter of, 8; and Mongol invasion, 9 

Novosibirsk, 265, 493, 557, 567 

Novosti, 373; focus of, 375-76 

Novyi mir (New World), 381-82, 388, 389, 390 

nuclear deterrence: defined, 661; to justify 
Khrushchev's troop cuts, 661 

nuclear disarmament {see also arms control), 
419; proposal for, by Gorbachev, 443-44; 
proposal for, by Reagan, 444; proposed by 
Soviet Union, 442, 691; proposed by United 
States, 442; rejected by Soviet Union, 442 

nuclear forces: of Britain, 417, 421, 444, 690; 



of France, 417, 420, 444, 690; of West Ger- 
many, Soviet fears of, 421 

nuclear-free zones, 413, 419, 691 

nuclear parity, 92, 401, 442, 671, 681, 693, 699 

nuclear power, 481, 510, 511, 512, 869; export 
of technology for, 611; self-sufficiency in, for 
Comecon, 603 

nuclear testing, moratorium on, 418 

nuclear war, 86, 392, 413, 418; as beyond poli- 
tics, 656-57; civil defense after, 721; as con- 
tinuation of politics, 655-56; deterring, 687; 
devastation of, 670, 681; effect of preemp- 
tive strike in, 673; importance of preemp- 
tive strike in, 670, 671, 673; Khrushchev's 
view of, 85; limited, 662, 664, 671; Malen- 
kov's view of, 85; possibility of, 671; 
scenarios, 670, 671, 678, 686, 687; Soviet 
military doctrine on, 653-54, 662; Soviet vic- 
tory in, 662; strategy for, in 1950s, 669-70; 
transition to strategy for, 670; unprovoked 
not likely, 664; victory in, 671, 673 

nuclear weapons, 423, 442-43, 671, 699; deep 
offensive operation using, 673; defense 
against, 681; development of, 627, 669; ef- 
fect of, on operations, 672-73; effect of, on 
strategy, 669, 677; fractional orbital bombard- 
ment system, 689; in general war, 670; and 
inevitability of war, 653; limits on strategic, 
442; manufacture of, 735; as means of de- 
struction, 673; as means of deterrence, 443, 
670; military efficacy of, 662-63; missiles, 676, 
687-88, 690, 710-11, 716; NATO's, 416, 
417, 444, 680; reductions in, 676, 690, 692; 
Soviet, 416, 417, 421, 427, 444; Soviet refusal 
to provide, to China, 426; United States, 690 

nurses, 268, 273 

Nystad, Treaty of, 21 



Ob' River, 14, 18, 109, 567, 581 
obkom (oblast committee), 297; bureau of, 308; 
bureau membership, 308-9, 324; effect of 
party reform on, 309; first secretary of, 
309-10; members of, 308; positions in, 
308-9; secretaries, 310 
oblasts, 293, 361, 364, 374; Brezhnev's Food 
Program in, 524; civil defense in, 721; de- 
fined, 102, 308; described, 102-4; KGB ad- 
ministrations in, 766; number of, 308; obkom, 
308; party conference of, 308 
Oblomov (Goncharov), 39 
obrazovanie (formal education), 245 
occupation (see also socio-occupational cate- 
gories): manual labor, 223; prestige of, 223- 
24; professional and technical, 223; role of 
earning in, 224 
October Manifesto, 46 
October Railroad, 550, 554, 557 
October Revolution. See Bolshevik Revolution 



1044 



Index 



Octobrists, 46, 47 
Oder-Neisse line, 421 
Odessa, 26, 122, 181 
Ogaden region, 439 

Ogarkov, Nikolai V., 663, 665, 678, 679, 729 

Ogonek (Little Fire), 381 

oil, lxiv, lxxvii, 112, 430, 431, 476, 485, 487, 
505-6; arms traded for, 613, 615, 618; drill- 
ing, 506, 611; drilling equipment, 506; ex- 
port of, lxiv, 592, 601, 605, 606, 609, 615; 
exports of, amount, 609; replaced by gas, 
508; pipeline system, 506, 580-81, 860; 
prices for, 602-3, 865; production level, 505; 
refining centers, 506; reserves of, 505-6, 584; 
reexports of, 615, 618; uses of, 505 

Oka River, 124 

Okhotsk, Sea of, 428, 505 

Okhrana, 36, 47 

okrug (territorial subdivision), 361, 766 
Oktiabr' (October), 382, 390 
Okudzhava, Bulat, 389 

Old Believers, 19; discrimination against, 48 

Old Bolsheviks, 70 

Old Church Slavonic, 190, 199 

Oleg, 5, 7 

Olekminskly Raion, 529 
Olympics: boycott of Moscow, 92, 416; Mos- 
cow complex, 721 
Oman, 432; obstacles to access to, 488 
Omsk, 502, 567 

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Solzhenit- 
syn), 392 

"On Measures for Improving Management of 
External Economic Relations," 597 

"On Questions Concerning the Creation, on 
U.S.S.R. Territory, and the Activities of 
Joint Enterprises, International Associations, 
and Organizations with the Participation of 
Soviet and Foreign Organizations, Firms, 
and Management Bodies," 599 

"On the Changeover of Scientific Organiza- 
tions to Full Cost Accounting and Self- 
Financing," 640-41 

operational art and tactics. See military opera- 
tional art, military tactics 

Operation Barbarossa, 699 

Opium War, Second, 37 

oprichnina, 14 

optics, 499 

Ordzhonikidze, 561 

Ordzhonikidze, Sergo, 156 

Orel, 497 

Orenburg, 508, 581 

Orenburg natural gas project, 868-69 

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and 
Development (OECD), 609 

Organization of Petroleum Exporting Coun- 
tries (OPEC), 615, 865; Soviet trade with, 
616-18 



Organization of the Islamic Conference; con- 
demnation by, of Soviet invasion of Af- 
ghanistan, 434 

Orguz Turks, 171 

Orlov, Aleksei, 24 

Orsk-Khalilovo, 501 

Orthodox Church. See Eastern Orthodox Church, 
Russian Orthodox Church 

Osetrovsk, 567 

Osh, 169 

Oskol, 501 

Ossetians, 184, 194 

Ostpolitik (Eastern Policy), 421 

Ostrovskii, Aleksandr, 39 

Ottoman Empire, 32, 36, 43, 49, 50, 153; fall 
of Constantinople to, 13; German interests 
in, 48; as inspiration for Armenian revolu- 
tionaries, 42-43; wars of, with Russia, 20, 
21, 23, 24, 25, 32, 37-38 

Ottoman Turks, 20, 153 

Outer Mongolia, 48 

Outer Space Treaty, 688, 689 

overbureaucratization, 277; in education, 248; 
of medical services, 263-64, 271; in schools, 
262 



Pacific Fleet, 727 

Pacific Ocean, 3, 101, 102, 109, 112, 139, 489, 

540, 546, 566, 570, 571, 575, 719 
Pacific region, 412 
Pacific rim, 570 

Pahlavi, Mohammed Reza (Shah), 431 
Pakistan, 108, 434, 435; secession of East from 

West, 436; Soviet trade with, 613 
Pale of Settlement, 24, 178-79 
Paleologue, Sophia, 13 
Palestine, 91 

Palestine Liberation Organization, 779 
Pamiat, 205 

Pamir Mountains, 108, 139 
pan-Islamic movement, 43 
pan-Turkic movement, 43 
Paraguay, 413 

paramedics, 264; medical training for, 268 
Paris, 592 

Paris, Treaty of (1856), 36, 37 

Party Building and Cadre Work Department 

(CPSU), 301, 314, 731 
party commission, 731 

party committees: indoctrination of personnel 
by, 769 

Party Conference: Eighteenth, 295; Nineteenth, 

295, 296, 304, 311, 482 
party conferences, 295-96; goals of Nineteenth, 

296; importance of, 295-96; meetings of, 

295; province-level, 308; resolutions of 

Nineteenth, 296 



1045 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



party congresses {see also under individual con- 
gresses), 71, 292, 293-95; attendance at, 293; 
defined, 293; delegates, 293; economic plans 
presented at, 460; events, 295; frequency of, 
293-95; industrial policy statements at, 492; 
notable, 295; turnover rate at Twenty- 
Seventh, 297,; turnover rate at Twenty-Sixth, 
297 

party control: in the armed forces, 697, 730-33; 
of art, 369, 371, 372; of film, 390; of govern- 
ment, 340-41; hindered by technological 
revolution, 369; of journalists, 378; justifi- 
cation for, 370; of legislative system, 347-48; 
of mass media, 369; of military-technical 
policy, 666; of Ministry of Internal Affairs, 
785; of music, 395; of science, 633-34; of 
society, 281, 282; of society justified, 281 

Party Control Committee, lxxxi, 292, 298 

party members: candidate, 317-18, 321; demo- 
graphics of, 289; disciplinary action against, 
319; educational level of, 323; full, 318, 321; 
number of, 322; obligations for, 318; occu- 
pations of, 281; peasant, 323; professional, 
323; rights of, 318-19; training of {see also 
party schools), 316, 320-22; white-collar, 
323; working-class, 323 

party membership, 316-22; benefits of, 218, 

319- 20; dues and fees of, 317-18; ethnic 
groups in, 322, 323-24; necessary for ad- 
vancement, 218, 316; occupational status of, 
322-23; and political power, 211, 218; 
professionals in, 322; proportional repre- 
sentation in, 322; requirements for, 316; 
selection procedures for, 317-20; social com- 
position of, 322-25; standards for admission, 
317; of teachers, 248; women in, 322 

party-organizational work, 307, 731 

party organizations, city- and district-level, 
310-12; composition of, 310-11; economic 
administration in, 311-12; first secretary of, 
311; members of, 310; science and technol- 
ogy under, 633-34; secretariat of, 311; struc- 
ture of, 310 

party organizations, republic -level, 306-7; first 
secretaries of, 307; members of, 307; second 
secretaries of, 307; secretariats of, 307; struc- 
ture of, 306-7 

party political work, 731 

party program, 295; 1986, proletarian inter- 
nationalism in, 684 

Party Rules, 295, 299, 379; Central Committee 
described in, 296; factions banned by, 288; 
on members' obligations, 318; on members' 
rights, 318; on party congresses, 295; on 
party hierarchy, 292, 308; on party mem- 
bership, 297; on primary party organiza- 
tions, 312 

party schools: higher, 321; intermediate-level, 

320- 21; primary, 320; purposes, 321-22 



Pasternak, Boris, 382, 390 

patron-client relations, 313-14, 315-16; Brezh- 
nev's as example, 315-16; factors in, 315; 
loyalty in, 315; and nomenklatura 313-14, 
315-16; policy-making implications of, 316; 
replacement of patron by client, 315 

Paul, 27; assassination of, 28; reign of, 27-28 

Pavlodar, 497, 503 

Pavlov, Ivan P., 625 

Pavlov, Valentin, Ixxix 

peaceful coexistence, 85, 86, 303, 412, 413, 416; 
defined, 402; as foreign policy goal, 402; 
nuclear deterrence as cause of, 661 

peaceful road to socialism, 440 

Peasant Land Bank, 35 

peasants, lxv, 26, 33, 51, 93, 211; collectivi- 
zation of, 148, 150, 151, 758; education of, 
35; enserfment of, 149, 151; legal status of, 
17; as party members, 323; and Populist 
movement, 40; private plots of, 473, 476, 
522; reform of court system for, 47; re- 
sistance of, to collectivization, 69; seizure of 
land by, 472; social position of, in Russian 
Empire, 212-13; starvation of, by Stalin, 69, 
520 

Pechora Basin, 558; coal reserves in, 508-9 
pedagogy, 249-50 

pensioners: continuing to work, 274; income 
of, 221, 274; number of, 274 

pension system, 274-75; eligibility, 274; new 
law for, 275; long- service pensions, 275; per- 
sonal pensions, 275 

Pentecostals, 191 

People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, 410 
People's Commissariat of Foreign Trade, 593, 
594 

People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs. See 

NKVD 
people's court, 359 

People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan 
(PDPA), 434 

People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (South 
Yemen), 414, 432; military advisers in, 684; 
military access to, 727; observer status of, 
in Comecon, 616; satellite communications 
hookup to, 582; Soviet arms bought by, 614; 
Soviet arms deliveries to, 685; Soviet mili- 
tary base in, 685; Soviet trade with, 613; ties 
to Comecon, 855 

People's Will, 41, 44 

perestroiha (restructuring), lvii, lxi, 115, 451, 
480, 515, 542, 764, 765; changes in econ- 
omy under, 592; contract brigades under, 
525; demands of, for industry, 492-93; East 
European reaction to, 425; effects of, lix, 
lxiv; in foreign trade, 597; of health care, 
263; individual productivity as target under, 
490; in industry, 486, 495, 496; internal 
security under, 755; in military industry, 



1046 



Index 



494; problems with, lvii, lxxviii; reaction to, 
lix; resistance to, 490-91, 492; of science and 
technology, 640; of schools, 244, 246-47, 
256, 262; of trade, 608 

Perm', 124 

permafrost, 104 

permanent revolution, 66 

Persian, 172 

Persian Achaemenid Empire, 160, 169 
Persian Armenia, 153 

Persian Empire. See Persian Achaemenid Em- 
pire, Persian Savafid Empire 

Persian Gulf, 412, 430, 603 

Persian Savafid Empire, 153 

Peru, 441; Soviet aid to, 441 

Peter I (the Great), 4, 19, 26, 28, 30, 139, 150, 
161, 171; Academy of Sciences founded by, 
624; annexation of Azerbaydzhan by, 157; 
ascension of, to throne, 20; drive for West- 
ernization by, 22, 625; governmental struc- 
ture under, 21-22; Grand Embassy of, 20; 
industries developed under, 22, 486; mili- 
tary accomplishments of, 20; reign of, 20-22; 
Russian Orthodox Church under, 186; suc- 
cession to, 22-23; Table of Ranks of, 21, 
212; taxes levied under, 22; youth of, 20 

Peter II, 23 

Peter III, 23; deposed by Catherine II, 23; mur- 
dered, 23-24; reign of, 23 
Petersen, Phillip, 679 

petrochemical industry, 502-3; joint ventures 
in, 502; plants in, 502-3; products of, 502-3 

Petrograd (see abo Leningrad, St. Petersburg), 
51, 697 

Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' 
Deputies, 57; Bolshevik domination of, 59; 
contravention of Provisional Government by, 
57-58; joint rule of, with Provisional Gov- 
ernment, 57-59; "Order No. 1," 58; reac- 
tion of, to "July Days," 58 

Petroleum Refining and Petrochemical Indus- 
try, Ministry of the, 493 

Philippines, 437 

physicians, 264; medical training for, 268, 
272-73; improvement in quality of medical 
training for, 273; poor quality of training for, 
271; prestige of, 224; research by, 268, 273; 
salaries of, 217, 224; women as, 221, 268; 
work load of, 263-64 

physicians' assistants, 264; medical training for, 
268, 273 

physics, 623 

Pioneers, 230, 246; military training of, 739 
pipelines, 546, 580-81, 584; amount transport- 
ed, 580; first, 580; gas, 581, 609, 721; 
materials for, 606; oil, 580; technology trans- 
fer for, 644-45 
Pipeline Troops, 721 

planning: agencies for, 453, 629; allocation of 



resources under, 460; bargaining in, 462; 
complexity of, 465-66; among Comecon 
members, 866-70; difficulty of maintaining 
control over, 469; for machine-building and 
metal-working complex, 496, 500-501; prices 
established by, 460; reform of, 465-69; re- 
form of, under Khrushchev, 466; for science 
and technology, 629-32; targets in, 460, 500; 
worker participation in, 462 

Planning, Budgeting, and Finance Commis- 
sion, 357 

planning, economic, 357 

planning, long-range: for end of the twentieth 
century, 481; norms of, 468; period covered 
by, 460 

planning, short-range: kinds of, 460; period 
covered by, 460 

plans: annual, 460, 638; coordination of Come- 
con, 867-68; five-year, described, 460; pro- 
duction, 460, 462; review and revision of 
draft, 462 

plastics industry, 502 

Plekhanov, Georgii, 41 

Pobedonostsev, Konstantin, 36 

Podgornyi, Nikolai, 88; as chairman of Presid- 
ium, 89 

podmena (substitution), 292 

pogroms, anti-Jewish, 46 

Poland, 3, 9, 14, 15, 17, 18, 24, 42, 61, 62, 
86, 101, 141, 151, 179, 414, 424, 425, 552, 
575, 581, 862, 883, 890; army of, under 
Soviet control, 877; Belorussia ceded to, 145; 
de-Stalinization in, 879-80; Hitler's invasion 
of, 73; influence of, on Baltic nationalities, 
147; influence of, on Muscovy, 19; intelli- 
gence gathering by, 780; Jewish migration 
to, 178; Latvia ceded to, 149; martial law 
imposed in, 610; as member of Comecon, 
601, 854, 859, 871; Mongol invasion of, 9; 
nuclear-free zone proposed by, 691; occu- 
pation of, by Red Army, 877; October 1956 
riots in, 880; partition of, by Catherine II, 
24, 145, 190; partition of, by Hitler and 
Stalin, 73, 474; revolution of 1989, lix; satel- 
lite communications hookup to, 582; Solidar- 
ity trade union movement in, 90, 229, 425; 
Soviet forces stationed in, 728; Soviet in- 
fluence over, 423; Soviet invasion of, in 1939, 
lviii, 74, 550, 682, 699; Soviet treaty with, 
877; Stalin's desire for influence in, 77; 
Ukraine ruled by, 141 ; uprisings in, 45, 424; 
war of, with Muscovy, 18, 141; in World 
War I, 49 

Poland, Russian, 29, 42; anti-Russian upris- 
ing in, 31 ; constitution granted to, 29; as in- 
dustrial area, 33; partition of, 24; reduced 
to province, 31; in World War I, 49 

Poles, 8, 24, 36, 45, 124, 138, 146, 148, 
152, 178; as Bolsheviks, 322; discrimination 



1047 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



against, 48; rebellion of, against Russia, 147; 
rebellion of, against Russification, 42 
police (see also Committee for State Security, 
internal security police): under Brezhnev, 
782; criticism of, 782; militsiia (uniformed 
police), 783, 794; separated from security 
police, 782 

police state, tsarist: defined, 756; foundations 
of, 756-57; impediments to, 757 

policy: formation, 292-93, 633-34; implemen- 
tation, 292-93 

Polish Counter- Reformation, 18 

Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, 145, 147, 
178 

Polish People's Army, 880, 891 

Polish Socialist Party, 42 

Polish-Soviet War (1920-21), 62 

Polish Succession, War of, 23 

Polish United Workers' Party, 425, 880 

Politburo (see also Presidium), 65, 88, 292, 

298- 300, 303, 305, 315, 330, 341, 343, 346, 
347, 358, 629, 665, 702, 729, 764, 764, 781; 
authority of, 330; Central Committee's au- 
thorities delegated to, 296; defense minister 
as member of, 729-30; as determiner of for- 
eign policy, 401; financial planning by, 632; 
formation of, 298; KGB control by, 769; as 
maker of foreign policy, 403-4, 409; mem- 
bers of, 299, 324, 783, 785; membership in, 
accession to, 299; membership of, in Secre- 
tariat, 300; nationalities represented on, 140; 
newspaper reports on, 379; nomenklatura au- 
thority of, 313; as policy maker, 292, 628; 
power of, 299; purpose of, 298-99; role of 
Defense Council in, 700; salaries in, 220; 
under Stalin, 71, 81; trends characterizing, 

299- 300 

political action groups: conservative, lxix-lxx; 
liberal, lxix-lxx 

Political Consultative Committee (Warsaw 
Pact), 879, 884-85, 889, 891; Committee of 
Minister of Foreign Affairs, 885; functions 
of, 884-85; Joint Secretariat, 885; organi- 
zation of, 884-85 

political indoctrination, 880; in armed forces, 
697, 877, 880; defined, 244; in education, 
243, 244, 250, 262; in Hungary, 881; in 
preschool, 253; reinforcements of, 245 

political rights, lxxiv 

Polonization: of Belorussians, 145; of Lithua- 
nians, 147 
Polovtsians, 8 
Poltava, 20, 21 
polycentrism, 414-15 

polyclinic complexes (see also clinics, health care, 

hospitals), 263 
polymers, 502 

polytechnical education, 244; components of, 
246; as creator of classless society, 247; focus 



of, 258; importance of, 246-47; practical 
training in, 246, 250 
Ponomarev, Boris, 407 

Popular Movement for the Liberation of An- 
gola (MPLA), 439 
Popular Unity (Chile), 440 
population, 99, 115-30; able-bodied, 119; age, 

119- 20, 123; birth rates, 118, 119; causes 
of death, 120; censuses, 115-16; "center of 
gravity" of, 124; density, 124-25, 126; dis- 
asters decreasing, 99-100, 118-19; distribu- 
tion of, 101, 108, 124-25; divorce, 125- 27; 
and economy, 119; family, 125-27; fertility, 
121; government reaction to problems of, 
130; growth, 116, 118, 119, 125; importance 
of demographic issues, 100; infant mortality, 
116-18, 244; life expectancy, 116; marriage, 
119, 125-27; migration, 122-24; mortality, 

120- 21; in 1940, 119; in 1959, 119; in 1989, 
116; policies, 127-30; problems, 127-30; 
rural, 224; of Russians, 127; in Russian 
Republic, 102; sex ratio, 118, 119-20; sex 
structure, 119-20, 123; urban, 224; urbani- 
zation, 121-22, 224; vital statistics, 116-19 

Populist movement, 43; goals of, 40; leaders 
of, 40; terrorism in, 41 

Populists (Narodniki), 40 

Port Arthur, 44 

ports, categories of, 576 

Portugal, 422, 435, 439 

Portuguese Communist Party, 422 

Postnikov, Mikhail M., 250 

post offices, 585; censors in, 585; inspection of 
incoming parcels in, 585 

potatoes, 533-34; area occupied by, 533-34; 
cultivation of, 533; harvest, 541 

Potsdam Conference, 80 

poverty, 221; benefits, 276-77; among pension- 
ers, 274; number of Soviet citizens living in, 
lxiv 

Power Machinery Building, Ministry of, 493 
Poznan, 424 
Prague, 720 

Prague Spring, 425, 882-84; international re- 
action to, 884; outcome of, 883-84; Warsaw 
Pact exercises in preparation for, 882- 
83 

Pravda (Truth), 311, 371, 378-79, 390, 415, 
585, 682, 764; circulation of, 380; focus of, 
380 

preemptive nuclear strike, 690, 692 
Premilitary Training Directorate, 742 
preschool, 251-53; academic preparation in, 

251-53; enrollment, 251; extended day care, 

251; kindergartens, 251; locations of, 251; 

number of institutions, 251; nurseries, 251; 

political indoctrination in, 253; problems in, 

253 



1048 



Index 



Preservation of Public Order, Ministry for the 
(MOOP) {see also Ministry of Internal Af- 
fairs), 782 

presidency: creation of, lxxi; effect of, lxxi; pow- 
ers of, lxxi 

Presidential Council: dissolved, lxxii; formed, 
lxxi 

Presidium chairman (of Supreme Soviet), 
352-53; duties of, 352; power of, 352; re- 
sponsibilities of, 352-53; status of, 352 

Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, 81, 82, 84, 
88, 268, 292, 333, 335, 339, 340, 347-48, 

350, 351-52, 358, 702, 761; chairman of, 
352-53; composition of, 330; decrees by, 

351, 760; as creator of Defense Council, 700; 
first deputy chairman, 352; foreign policy 
responsibilities of, 408; KGB established by, 
760; and law, 359; as leading legislative or- 
gan, 351; members of, 351, 629; powers of, 
351-52; as steering committee for Supreme 
Soviet, 351 

price reform, lxi 

prices: under Comecon 1978 Comprehensive Pro- 
gram, 864-65; effect of subsidies on, lxiv, 470; 
government policy for setting, lxiv, 470; in- 
crease of food, 525; manipulation of, 470, 
476; reform of structure of, 470, 599, 618 

prikazi (government departments), 17, 21 

primary party organizations (PPOs), 281, 292, 
298, 310, 311, 312-13, 341, 346, 731; au- 
thority of, 282; and economic plan, 313; 
decisions of, on applications for party mem- 
bership, 317; number of, 312; party meet- 
ing of, 312; secretary of, 213; stimulation by, 
of production, 313; tasks of, 312 

Primorskiy Krai, 529 

Principles of Legislation on Marriage and the 
Family of the USSR and the Union Repub- 
lics, 234 

Private Life (Raizman), 391 

private plot: defined, 522; output of, 522 

Procuracy, 301, 335, 359-60, 756, 783, 787; 
description of, 787; functioning of, 359, 787; 
purge of, 763; responsibilities of, 360, 771 

procurator: defined, 359; general, 359; role of, 
330, 787; supervision, 760-61 

production, 624; organizations, 634-37; or- 
ganizational separation and, 638-39, 640 

production associations, 453 

production facilities, 635; functions of, 635; or- 
ganizational separation and, 638-39, 640; 
pilot plants in, 635 

productivity: method for improving, 451-52; 
need for improving, 478; under perestroika, 
490 

professional revolutionaries: necessity for, 283- 

84; party as, 281, 282 
Progressive Bloc, 50 
Prokhanov, Aleksandr, 390 



Prokhorov, Aleksandr, 623 

proletarian internationalism: defined, 402; ef- 
fect of, on current foreign policy, 402; and 
Soviet intervention in Third World, 684 

proletarian populism, 389 

pronatalist policy, 125 

Propaganda Department (CPSU), 404, 407; 

power of, 374 
property, personal ownership of, 453 
prostitution, 234 

Protestants, 184, 191; growth in number of, 200 
Provisional Government, 59; downfall of, 
59-60; formation of, 55, 58; joint rule of, 
with Petrograd Soviet, 57-59; Lenin's call 
for overthrow of, 58; loss of popular support 
for, 59; membership of, 57, 58; overthrow 
of, by Bolsheviks, lvii; Petrograd Soviet's 
contravention of, 57-58; popular uprising 
against, 58; prosecution of World War I by, 
58; reforms under, 58; right-wing challenge 
to, 59 

Prussia, 24, 31, 32, 147; end of Russian alli- 
ance with, 38; as member of Quadruple Al- 
liance, 29; Russian alliance with, 23, 37; 
Russian invasion of, 23, 49; Russian rela- 
tions with, 36 

Pskov, 57 

psychiatry, 263; abuses of, 267; hospital-pris- 
ons, 267; number of hospital beds for, 268; 
outdated, 267; possible reform of, 268; statis- 
tics, 268; as treatment for political dissenters, 
267 

Pugachev, Emelian, 25 

Pugachev Uprising, 25-26 

Pugo, Boris K., lxxv, Ixxix, 298 

purges by Stalin (see also Great Terror), 55, 
70-71, 78, 382, 761; of diplomats, 410; of 
East European leaders, 80; effect of, on elite, 
213; initiated, 70; of Kirgiz members of 
CPSU, 168; of military, 698-99; of party 
members, lviii; reasons for, 70-71; revealed 
in "secret speech," 84; role of police in, 765; 
of scientists, 626 

Pushkin, Aleksandr, 31, 38 

Pushkin, Boris, 597 



Qasim, Abd al Karim 
Quadruple Alliance, 29 
Quartermaster Troops, 739 
Quran, 192 



radio, 546; audience, 382; growth of, 582; in- 
ternational, 382; jamming of broadcasts, 
382; Soviet, 382 
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 382 
Radio Industry, Ministry of the, 646 

1049 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



radios, 499 

Radiotechnical Troops, 714, 715 
Radishchev, Aleksandr, 26 
Raduga satellite system, 585; uses of, 585 
Rahr, Alexander, 300 

raikom (raion committee): bureau of, 210; com- 
position of, 310-11; economic administration 
in, 311-12; first secretary of, 311; meetings 
of, 311; members of, 310; secretariat of, 311; 
structure of, 310 

railroads, 545; automated signaling equipment, 
554; Baykal-Amur Main Line, 557-58; cargo 
on, 546-47; centralized train control, 554; 
classification yards, 554; computerization in, 
554; electrification of, 547, 552, 554; equip- 
ment of, 554-56; expansion of, 547, 553, 554; 
freight traffic, 548, 553; heavily traveled axes, 
557; history of (1913-39), 546-48; improve- 
ments, 552, 553; length of operating lines, 
548; lessons learned from Soviet-Finnish war, 
550; limits of, 553; major, 560; marshaling 
yards, 554; mission of, under Lenin, 547; in 
nineteenth-century Russia, 33; names of, 554; 
nationalization of, 547; network of, 546, 553; 
organization of, 554-56; passengers on, 547; 
passenger traffic, 548, 553, 556-57; in post- 
war period, 552-54; problems, 548, 552, 553; 
purpose of, lxiii; in Soviet-Finnish War, 550; 
in World War II, 550-52 

Railroad Troops, 721 

railways, metropolitan (metros), 561 

Railways, Ministry of, 554 

raion (territorial subdivision), 104, 225, 310, 
361, 364, 766; Brezhnev's Food Program in, 
524; civil defense in, 721-22 

Raizman, Iulii, 391-92 

Ramadan, 193 

Rapallo, Treaty of, 67 

rapid medical assistance system, 266-67 

Rasputin, 50; assassination of, 51 

Rasputin (Klimov), 392 

Ratmanova Island (Big Diomede Island), 101 
Razumovskii, 300 

Reagan, Ronald W.: "Reagan Doctrine" of, 
404; Soviet-United States relations under, 
416; summits of, with Gorbachev, 418-19 

Rear Services, lxxvi, 702, 720-21; conscripts 
in, 743; mission of, 720-21; number of, 720; 
organizations in, 720-21 

reasonable sufficiency, lxxvii, 663, 692, 693, 
729 

recording equipment, 499 

Red Army (see also armed forces, Soviet), 55, 
142, 148, 150, 154, 155, 158, 170, 171, 176, 
472, 723, 758, 875, 876; in Civil War, 698; 
control of non-Russian Soviet republics by, 
64; egalitarianism of early, 698; formation 
of, 697-98; Kronshtadt Rebellion put down 
by, 63; modernization of, 698; NKVD in, 



759; occupation of Eastern Europe by, 
877-78; organized by Trotsky, 61; profes- 
sionalization of, 698; under Stalin, 698; in 
World War II, lviii, 75, 550-52 

Red Guard, 426, 697 

Red Sea, 439 

Red Square, 291, 714, 729 
Red Terror, 63, 758 

reform, 452, 624; in research and development, 
640 

reform, economic. See economic reform 
Reformation, 186 

rehabilitation: of banned artists and writers, 
370; of scientists, 627; of Stalin's victims, 84 

regional agro- industrial associations (RAPOs), 
524 

Reinsurance Treaty (1887), 38 

religion (see also under individual religions): 
diversity in, 27; under Gorbachev, lxvii; 
identified with nationality, 198, 199-200; 
under Khrushchev, 199; under NEP, 68; 
number of believers, 184; repression of, lxvii; 
repression of, under Stalin, 72; resurgence 
in, under Brezhnev, 94; Soviet attempts to 
control, 198-99; Soviet attempts to elimi- 
nate, 198; Soviet attempts to exploit, 198-99; 
Soviet policy on, 195, 198-201; Soviet re- 
pression of, 198, 199-201; under Stalin, 198- 
99 

religious groups (see also under individual 

denominations), 184-95 
Remington, Thomas F., 322 
Renaissance, 186 
Repentance (Abuladze), 392 
Republic of Korea (South Korea), 81, 413, 433, 

714 

republics (see also under individual republics): 
government of, 363-64; legal status of, 362- 
63; new union, 362-63; original, 362; plan- 
ning in, 464; requirements for status as, 362 

"Requiem" (Akhmatova), 382 

research, 624; applied, 626; and development, 
641; equipment, inadequacy of, 639-40; ex- 
pansion of, 627; genetics, 626; institutions, 
638-39, 640, 665; laboratory, 635; in NEP 
era, 625; organizational separation and, 
638-39, 640; organizations, 634-37; vessels, 
575-76 

reserve officer training programs, 748 
residence permits, 456 

resources (see also natural resources), 547; al- 
location of, problems in, 491 ; exhaustion of, 
485, 488; industrial, 487-91; restricted avail- 
ability of, 99, 488; uneven distribution of, 99 

retail outlets, 456 

revolutionary democracies, 428-29, 438 
revolutionary tribunals, 372 
revolution of 1905, 4, 45-46, 147, 176; causes 
of, 45 



1050 



Index 



revolution of February 1917, 55, 56-57, 145, 
147, 164, 171, 174, 176, 179; description of 
uprising, 57; economic change following, 
213; social change following, 213 

Reykjavik Summit (1986), 418, 419, 690, 892 

rezidenty (KGB employees abroad), 777, 778; 
guidelines for, 778 

Reznichenko, Vasilii G., 675 

Riga, 150, 201, 497, 540, 561 

river fleet: air-cushion vehicles, 569, 570; 
barges, 569; cargo vessels, 569; hydrofoils, 
569; icebreakers, 569; passenger vessels, 569; 
specialized vessels, 569; special-purpose 
ships, 569; tugboats, 569 

River Fleet, Ministry of the, 567 

rivers, 108-9, 122; cargo transportation on, 
545-46, 566; cargo vessels, 546; facilities on, 
569-70; international ferries, 546; kilometers 
of, 566; passenger liners, 546; ports on, 569- 
70, 571; research ships, 546 

roads, lxiii; density, 562; networks, 562, 565; 
poor condition of, 530, 545, 562-65; prob- 
lems caused by unpaved, 545; surfaces of, 
562; unsurfaced, 562 

Road Troops, 721 

robots, 479; importance of, to industry, 499 

Rocket Troops and Artillery, 707-8; artillery 
pieces, 707-8; missiles, 707; organization of, 
707; uniforms and rank insignia of, 738-39 

Rogers, William, 692 

Roman Empire, 173 

Romania, 49, 50, 73, 86, 90, 101, 174, 363, 
414, 425, 474, 552, 575, 877, 885; as mem- 
ber of Comecon, 601, 854, 860, 871; occu- 
pation of, by Red Army, 877; reaction of, 
to Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, 884; 
revolution of 1989, lix; satellite communi- 
cations hookup, to, 582; Soviet influence 
over, 423; Soviet invasion of, in 1939, 550; 
Soviet relations with, 407; Soviet treaty with, 
877 

Romanians, Moldavians as, 173, 174 
Roman Mstislavich (Prince), 9 
Romanov, Alexis, 17, 20 
Romanov, Filaret, 17 
Romanov, Grigorii V., 305 
Romanov, Mikhail, 17 

Romanov Dynasty, 15-18, 139; overthrown, 

51, 139 
Romans, 155 

Roosevelt, Franklin D., 77 

Rostov, 8, 12 

Rostov-na-Donu, 124, 265 

Rostropovich, Mstislav, 395 

Rotmistrov, Pavel A., 670 

ruble, 591, 599; convertibility of, 618, 866; de- 
fined, 457; function of, 865-66; under price 
reform, lxi 

Riigen, 575 



rural society, 224-26; agriculture as major em- 
ployer in, 225; agricultural machinery 
specialists in, 226; collective farm markets 
in, 456; cooperatives in, 456; culture, 224; 
demographics of, 226; divorce rate in, 233; 
economy, 224; golovki in, 225; housing con- 
ditions, 224; influx of urbanites, 227; migra- 
tion to the city, 226; nonpolitical elite, 226; 
role of party in, 225; structure of, 225-26; 
teachers, 226; tractor drivers in, 226; travel, 
225; and urban society, differences between, 
224-25; urbanization of, 226; white-collar 
workers in, 226; women in, 226 

Rurik, 5, 8 

Rurikid Dynasty, 5, 10, 12; end of, 15; organi- 
zation of Kievan Rus' under, 7; succession 
in, 7 

Ruska Pravda (Russian Truth), 7 

Russia: territorial expansion of, 16; war of, with 
Sweden, 141 

Russian autocracy, evolution of, 12-13 

Russian Central Asia (see also Central Asia, 
Soviet Central Asia), 161, 162, 167, 171 

Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik) (see also 
All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik), 
Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Rus- 
sian Social Democratic Labor Party), 55, 61, 
64, 698; composition of, 322; consolidation 
of authority by, 64-65; as constitutional rul- 
ers of Russia, 332; control of non- Russian 
nationalities by, 64; as engine of proletarian 
revolution, 283; founding of, by Lenin; in- 
tellectuals as professional revolutionaries, 
283-84; Lenin's conception of, 282-88; as 
professional revolutionaries, 281, 282; as sole 
interpreter of Marxist ideology, 281, 282 

Russian culture, 196; influence of Western cul- 
ture on, 4; special status of, 140 

Russian Empire, 101, 138, 139, 142, 153, 167, 
182; agriculture in, 33, 530; alliances of, 23, 
37-38; annexation of Georgian lands by, 
155; attempted reforms in, 47-48; automo- 
tive transportation in, 561; dismantled, lvii, 
61, 150; education in, 249; economy of, 27, 
33, 47, 50; expanding role of, in Europe, 23; 
expansion of, 29, 36-37, 41; foreign affairs 
of, 41; foreign policy goals of, under Alex- 
ander II, 37-38; genesis of, under Peter the 
Great, 21 ; impact of military victories of, 21 ; 
incompetence of, in World War I, 50; in- 
corporation of Lithuania into, 147; indus- 
try in, 33; influence of, on Soviet Union, lvii; 
literacy rate in, 243; as member of Quad- 
ruple Alliance, 29; Napoleonic wars of, 27, 
28; nationalities problems origins in, 135; 
origins of, in Muscovy, 3, 10-19, 21; as 
police state, 756; population growth in, 33; 
power of, 27; problems of, 26-27; railroads 
in, 546-47; role of, in putting down Boxer 



1051 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Rebellion, 44; social categories in, 212; ter- 
ritorial expansion of, 16; territory gained by, 
in World War I, 50 

Russian Far East, 41 

Russianization, 137 

Russian language, 127, 219; in armed forces, 
747, 748; in Georgian Republic, 198; in 
school curriculum, 254; special status of, 140, 
197; as tool of national unification, 196, 
197-98 

Russian nationalism: emphasis of Nicholas I 
on, 30; in literature, 389; after World War 
II, 78 

Russian navy, creation of, 20 

Russian Orthodox Church (see also Holy 
Synod), 17, 30, 36, 68, 184, 190, 291, 624; 
autonomy denied to, 48; characteristics of 
medieval, 186; convents of, 188; number of 
active churches, 188; establishment of, 15; 
incorporation of, into government structure, 
22, 186-88; infiltration of, by KGB, 199; as 
instrument of Russification, 199, 200; under 
Khrushchev, 199; as manifestation of Rus- 
sian nationalism, 205; monasteries of, 186, 
188; number of believers, 188; origins of, 
186; under Peter the Great, 186-88; schism 
in, 19, 186; Soviet attempts to eliminate, 
198; Soviet cooperation with, 198-99; Soviet 
repression of, 198; under Stalin, 198-99; in 
World War II, 75, 198-99 

Russian Republic, lviii, lxviii, 64, 87, 121, 123, 
125, 139, 154, 162, 164, 166, 183, 184, 293, 
361, 389, 412, 497, 561, 567; agriculture in, 
533, 534, 536; alcoholism in, 270; area of, 
102, 139; autonomous republics in, 176, 181; 
Code of Criminal Procedure, 761, 771, 775, 
789; death following abortion or childbirth 
in, 271; DOSAAF clubs in, 734; drainage 
projects in, 529; families in, 236; fertility in, 
121; forestry in, 538; infant mortality in, 116; 
irrigation projects in, 529; Jewish commu- 
nity in, 180; KGB in, 766; migration to and 
from, 123; minorities in, 137, 145; party ap- 
paratus of, 140, 306, 308; population of, 102, 
127; roads in, 562; Roman Catholic com- 
munity in, 190; tree farms in, 475 

Russians, 3, 5, 8, 135, 138, 151, 158, 162, 163, 
164, 174, 182; declining birth rates among, 
125, 127; distribution of, 139; divorce of, 
233; dominance of, lxvi, 138-39, 747; dom- 
inance of, in high positions, 140; education 
of, 218; in higher education, 140; history of, 
139; membership of, in CPSU, 140, 219, 
323, 324; membership of, in Politburo, 140; 
nationalist movement among, 205; and non- 
Russians, tensions between, 388; poplula- 
tion, lxvi; as republic party first secretaries, 
307; as percentage of Soviet population, 102; 
population of, 137, 139; social advantage of, 



218; urbanization of, 139-40 
Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (see also 
Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik)), 42, 
43, 61, 296-97; Bolshevik faction of, 57; 
Menshevik faction of, 57; politburo formed 
by, 298-99 

Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (see 
also Russian Republic), 332, 333, 362 

Russian Turkestan, 167 

Russification, 4; under Alexander III, 36; Cen- 
tral Asians' resistance to, 159; presaged by 
Catherine II, 25; rebellion against, 42; Rus- 
sian Orthodox Church as instrument of, 199; 
under Stalin, 154, 154 

Russo-Japanese War, 4, 44-45, 428; acceler- 
ation by, of political movements, 45 

Rust, Mathias, 714, 729 

Ruthenian language, 10 

Ryazan', 12, 497, 511 

Rybakov, Anatolii, 390 

Ryzhkov, Nikolai I., 341, 356, 603 

Sacharov, Vadim, 397 
Saddam Husayn, 431 

St. Petersburg (see also Leningrad, Petrograd), 
22, 23; "Bloody Sunday" in, 45; as indus- 
trial region, 33 

St. Petersburg Soviet, 57 

St. Sofia Cathedral (Kiev), 7 

St. Sofia Cathedral (Novgorod), 7 

Sakhalin, 45, 418, 611, 714 

Sakharov, Andrei, lxxiv, 634, 637 

Saliut space program, 582, 689 

samizdat, 197, 389 

sanatoriums, 267 

San Stefano, Treaty of (1878), 38 

Sarai, 9 

Saratov, 497 

Saratovskaya Oblast, 561 
Sardinia, in Crimean War, 32 
Saudi Arabia, 432 

savings accounts, 458; amounts in, 458 

Savinkin, Nikolai, 769 

Savkin, Vasilii E., 658 

Sayano-Shushenskoye, 511 

Scandinavia, 3, 612; Soviet objectives in, 423; 

Soviet relations with, 422-23 
Schnittke, Alfred, 395 

schools: abuses in, 261; administration of, 247; 
centralization of, 243, 247; differences be- 
tween rural and urban, 251; excessive 
bureaucracy in, 262; failure of, to meet labor 
needs, 261; formal academic education in, 
246; higher education, 257-60; KGB lectures 
to, 772-74; kinds of, 250; preschool, 251-53; 
problems in, 261; reform of, 262; secondary 
education, 253-56, 742; special education, 
257; upgrading vocational education and 
labor training in, 249 



1052 



Index 



schools, specialized secondary, 742; enrollment, 
256; major fields of study, 256; school re- 
form in, 256, 262 

Schools for Young Communists, 321 

Schools of the Fundamentals of Marxism- 
Leninism, 320 

school system: administration of, 247; adminis- 
trative organs of, 247-48; structure of, 252 

science: administration of, 628-33; under Brezh- 
nev, 94; Comecon cooperation in, 869-70; 
commitment to, 623; curriculum for, 649; 
directions of, 632; financing of, 632-33, 
640-41; and ideology, 633-34; implementa- 
tion of plans for, 630; influence of, on party 
decisions, 634; Khrushchev's reforms in, 
627; literature abstracts, 633; long-term goals 
and, 624, 632; mixed results of commitment 
to, 623-24; necessity of growth in, 623; or- 
thodox Marxist interpretation of, 72; party 
control of, during 1930s, 71-72; planning 
for, 629-32; policy making for, 628-29, 
633-34; problems in training, 649; problems 
of, 624; and production, connection between, 
641; severance of ties with West, 626; short- 
term goals and, 624; spending on, 715; under 
Stalin, 625-26; training in, 648-50 

Science and Education Institutions Department 
(CPSU): educational policies instituted by, 
247; as monitor of Academy of Sciences, 
628-29 

scientific production associations (NPOs), 
494-95; defined, 641; number of, 641; 
problems in, 641 

scientific research institutes (Nils), 494, 503, 
636; focus of, 634-35; number of, 635; re- 
search laboratories .under, 635 

"Segodniav mire," 383; audience, 383; for- 
mat, 383 

sculpture, 396-97 

Scythia, 173 

Scythians, 5 

sea lines of communication, 678 
sea routes, 574 

Second Chief Directorate (KGB): foreign in- 
telligence role of, 777; responsibility of, 767 

Second Five- Year Plan (1933-37), 69, 473, 548 

secondhand stores, 456 

Secretariat (CPSU), 88, 292, 300-301, 314, 403, 
404, 762; Central Committee's authorities 
delegated to, 296; departments of, 301; lines 
of authority in, 300-301; military research and 
production under, 647; as party bureaucra- 
cy administration, 292; as policy implementer, 
292; as policy maker, 292-93, 628; political 
weight of, 300; power of, 300; role of, 300; 
State and Legal Department, 769; supervi- 
sion of arts and mass media by, 373 

"secret speech," 82-84, 305, 424, 627, 760 

Security Council, lxxii 



security sections, 757 

Security Troops, 756; number of, 793; organi- 
zation of, 793; tasks of, 793 

self-employment, under 1977 Constitution, 453 

self-sufficiency: in agricultural production, 529; 
in industrial raw materials, lxxvii, 488, 603; 
as reason for low level of foreign trade, 591 ; 
as socialist goal 

Seljuk Turks, 155 

sel'sovet (village soviet), 225 

Semichastnyi, Vladimir, 762 

Senate, 35 

Serbia, 49, 50 

Serbo-Ottoman war, 37 

Serbs, 138, 146 

serfdom, 26, 27; abolition of, 212; Radishchev's 
attack on, 26; sanction of, by government, 17 

serfs, 33; dissatisfaction of, with outcome of 
emancipation, 34; emancipation of, 4, 34, 
35, 486; Ukrainians as, 141 

Serov, Ivan, 761 

Sevastopol', 32, 540 

Seventeenth Party Congress, 295 

Seventh Chief Directorate (KGB): responsibil- 
ity of, 767 

Seventh-Day Adventists, 191 

Seven Years' War, 23 

sexually transmitted diseases, 269, 271 

Seychelles, 616, 727 

shamanism, 184 

Shaposhnikov, Eugenii, lxxix, lxxx 
Shatalin, Iurii, 794 
Shatrov, Mikhail, 394 
Shchelokov, Nikolai, 316, 782 
Shcherbyts'kyy, Volodymyr, 299, 316 
Shchetinin, M., 250 
Shelepin, Aleksandr, 761, 762 
Shevardnadze, Eduard A., 156, 346, 410, 422, 

428, 437, 441, 682; resignation by, from 

CPSU, lxviii 
Shevchenko, Arkady, 778 
Shikotan-to Island, 428 
Shilinski, Dmitrii, 397 

Shipbuilding Industry, Ministry of the, 496, 
646 

ships, 545; freighters, 571-72; import of, 611; 

passenger fleet, 572 
Shostakovich, Dmitrii, 395 
show trials, 70 
Shubkin, Vladimir N., 250 
Shuiskii, Vasilii, 15 

Siberia, 99, 101, 102, 108, 110, 125, 139, 176, 
194, 433, 546, 550, 553, 566, 567, 581, 727; 
age-sex structure in, 123; agriculture in, 529; 
Aeroflot service to, 578; climate and terrain 
of, 100, 110, 112; coal reserves in, 508; De- 
cembrists exiled to, 30; deportation of purged 
party members to, 70; economic develop- 
ment of, 479; electric generation in, 510; 



1053 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



exploitation of resources of, 41, 488, 611; for- 
estry in, 538-39; gas in, 609; kulaks deported 
to, 69; lack of electricity in, 510; lack of road 
service facilities in, 565; location of indus- 
try in, 488, 497; metal industry in, 502; 
migration to and from, 122, 123; mountains 
of, 107; natural resources in, 113, 485; ob- 
tained by Muscovy, 18; oil reserves in, 506; 
railroad construction in, 558; railroads in, 
547; relocation of workers to, 490; roads in, 
562; virgin land campaign in, 475, 522; 
water resources in, 108; winter in, 558 
Siberian Development Program, 490 
Siberian Division (Academy of Sciences), 636, 
640 

Siberian Khanate, 14, 175 
Signal Troops, 708-10; equipment of, 709; mis- 
sion of, 709; organization of, 708-9 
Sikhs, 436 
Simferopol', 557 

Sino-Indian war, 435; Soviet neutrality during, 
435 

Sino-Japanese Treaty of Peace and Friendship, 
426 

Sino-Soviet relations, 80-81, 407, 426-27, 571; 
border clashes, 426; breakup of, 415, 426, 
604; Brezhnev's attempt to reconcile, 426, 
427; decline in, 90; under Gorbachev, 427; 
mutual defense treaty, 81; negotiations to im- 
prove, 426-27; resumption of, 604; and 
Soviet relationship with India, 435-36; 
Soviet withdrawal of troops from Chinese 
border, 604; trade, 604 

Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and 
Mutual Assistance, 426 

Sixth Five- Year Plan, 476 

Sizov, Leonid G., 785 

Slavic culture, 3, 4, 10 

Slavic nationalities (see also under name of na- 
tionality), 138-46 
Slavophiles, 30-31 

Slavs (see also East Slavs, South Slavs, West 
Slavs), 127, 138, 168; birth rates of, 118; 
dominance of, 138, 218, 747; influence of, 
in development of Kievan Rus', 6; origins 
of, 5 

Sliun'kov, 299 

Slovaks, 138, 146 

Slovenes, 138 

smoking: campaign against, 270; efforts to 
reduce, 121, 270; health problems of, 270; 
number of smokers, 270 

Smolensk, 17 

Soares, Mario, 422 

socialism, 40, 331, 480 

"socialism in one country," 66, 593 

socialist competitions, 228-29, 471 

socialist internationalism, 683 

socialist legality, 786-87; under Gorbachev, 



786-87; under Stalin, 786 

socialist morality (see also communist ethics): 
defined, 246, 262; schools as molders of, 246 

socialist orientation, countries of, 429 

socialist ownership, lxi; environments of, 452; 
forms of, 452 

socialist parties, 42 

socialist property, 331, 339, 771 

socialist realism, lxxii, 71-72, 370-71, 372-73; 
denned, 369, 372; demands of, 372; interpre- 
tation of, under glasnost ', 371, 397; in liter- 
ature, 389-90; as official party doctrine, 372; 
under Stalin, 372 

Socialist Revolutionary Party, 45, 57, 60, 63; 
exile of members of, 65 

socialist virtues: examples of, 245 

social mobility, 226, 227-28; under Brezhnev, 

227- 28; and cronyism and nepotism, 227; 
downward, 227-28; effect of perestroika on, 
227; and geographic mobility, 227; Russian 
language necessary for, 227; slow progress 
of, 227, 228; as source of party legitimacy, 
289-90; under Stalin, 227 

social organizations, 228-30; examples of, 212; 
sports organizations as, 230; trade unions as, 

228- 29; youth organizations as, 229-30 
social position: and allocation of housing, 

222-23; benefits of, 219-24; determiners of, 
211; and income, 211; and nationality, 218- 
19; and party membership, 218; role of edu- 
cation in, 217-18 

social sciences: institutes for, 257; orthodox 
Marxist interpretation of, 72; party control 
of, during 1930s, 71-72 

social structure: changes in, in industrializing 
economy, 213; male-female relationships, 
231-34; self-perpetuation of, 211-12 

society (see also under individual categories): 
classes in, 214; cleavages in, 215; formation 
of, 212-15; socio-occupational categories in, 
211; stratification of, 214, 215-27 

socio-occupational categories, lxv, 211; agricul- 
tural workers, 217; blue-collar workers, 217; 
elite, 216; manual laborers, 217; white-collar 
workers, 216-17 

Socotra: Soviet military base in, 685 

Sofia, 20 

soft-currency goods, 603 
Soiuz pipeline, 581 
Soiuz space program, 582 
Sokolov, Sergei, 729 

Sokolovskii, Vasilii D., 662, 665, 670-71, 680, 
689 

Solidarity (Polish trade union movement), 90, 
229, 425, 888, 890; consequences of, for 
Soviet hegemony, 890; suppression of, 
890-91 

Solov'ev, Iurii, 348 



1054 



Index 



Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, lxxii, 392 
Somalia, 413, 439, 684 
Somali-Ethiopian war, 432 
Sotsialisticheskaia industriia (Socialist Industry), 
381 

South Africa, 438, 439, 605 

Southern Group of Forces, 881 

Southern Railroad, 557 

South Korea. See Republic of Korea 

South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast, 156 

South Slavs, 7, 138, 146 

South Yakut industrial complex, 489 

South Yemen. See People's Democratic Repub- 
lic of Yemen 

Sovetskaia kul'tura (Soviet Culture), 382 

Sovetskaia Rossiia (Soviet Russia), 380 

Sovetskaya Gavan', 558 

Soviet alliance system, 875-78 

Soviet anthem, 339-40 

Soviet army. See armed forces, Red Army 

Soviet Asians, 127 

Soviet-Bulgarian ferry line, 575 

Soviet Central Asia, 100, 102, 107, 108, 123, 
124, 130, 161, 162, 164, 168, 388, 514, 534, 
561, 581, 727; agriculture in, 532, 536; area, 
159; birth rates in, 1 18; climate of, 112; cot- 
ton grown in, 532; divorce rate in, 233; 
educational quality in, 261 ; electric genera- 
tion in, 510; families in, 236, 238; fertility 
in, 121, 139; free trade zones in, 604; gas 
reserves in, 507; increase in infectious dis- 
eases in, 270; industrialization of agriculture 
in, 227; industry in, 497; infant mortality 
in, 116; irrigation projects in, 529; lack of 
electricity in, 510; metal industry in, 502; 
migration to cities in, 226; mosques in, 
200-201; motherhood medals in, 236; na- 
tionalities in, 159-72; natural resources in, 
488; population of, 159, 226; railroads in, 
547 ; relocation of workers to, 490; resistance 
of residents of, to party membership, 324; 
rivers in, 527; steppes of, 1 10; Tatars in, 177; 
unofficial income in, 221-22 

Soviet Copyright Agency, 409 

Soviet-East European relations, 423-26 

Soviet-East German ferry line, 575 

Soviet-Egyptian Treaty of Friendship and 
Cooperation, 433 

Soviet Europeans, 127 

Soviet expansion: to create buffer zone, 79; 
prevention of, by Western allies, 79-80 

Soviet Far East, 73, 108, 110, 125, 180, 546, 
566, 567, 570, 572, 585, 721,725; Aeroflot 
service to, 578; agriculture in, 529; climate 
of, 112; economic development of, 479; elec- 
tric generation in, 510, 511; exploitation of 
resources in, 611; forestry in, 538-39; free 
trade zones in, 604; lack of electricity in, 510; 
location of industry in, 488-89, 497; migra- 



tion to and from, 122; poverty benefits in, 
277; railroad construction in, 558; relocation 
of workers to, 490; rivers in, 567; roads in, 
562 

Soviet Far North, 124, 546; Aeroflot service to, 
578; lack of road service facilities in, 565; 
location of industry in, 488 

Soviet-Finnish relations, 419-20, 422-23 

Soviet-Finnish War, 74, 473, 682, 699; role of 
railroads in, 550; Soviet casualties in, 699 

Soviet flag, 339 

Soviet-Indian relations, 429, 433, 435-36; 
Chinese antipathy to, 435; genesis of, 435; 
Soviet economic and military assistance, 435; 
Soviet technology transfer, 435-36; state 
visits between, 436 

Soviet-Iraqi Treaty of Friendship and Cooper- 
ation (1972), 431 

Soviet-Japanese relations, 427-28; origins of 
poor, 427-28 

Soviet-Middle East relations, 430-33; with 
Iran, 431-32; with Iraq, 431-32; with Tur- 
key, 430-31 

Soviet Military Encyclopedia, 658, 668 

Soviet of Nationalities, 333, 351; legislation 
passed by, 351; members of, 353; powers of, 
353; purposes of, 353-54; status of, 353 

Soviet of the Union, 333, 351, 356, 357; legis- 
lation passed by, 351 ; members of, 353; pow- 
ers of, 353; purposes of, 353-54; status of, 
353 

Soviet Railroads (SZD), 554 
Soviets, 213; sessions of provincial and district, 
365 

Soviet-Spanish relations, 422 

Soviet-United States relations, 415-19; cold, 
419; detente in, 416; effect on, of changes 
in Soviet leadership, 418; under Gorbachev, 
418; nuclear threat as factor in, 415; under 
Reagan, 416; trade, 607-9 

Soviet- West European relations, 419-23; with 
Britain, 421-22; with France, 420; goals in, 
419; proper relationship between, 419-20; 
with Portugal, 422; with Scandinavia, 
422-23; since World War II, 419; with 
Spain, 422; with West Germany, 420-21 

sovkhozy. See state farms 

Sovnarkom. See Council of People's Commissars 

space, 611, 715; ban on nuclear weapons in, 
442, 688; defenses, 715-16; objectives in, 
688-89; race to the moon, 94; research, 623, 
624; systems, 499; talks, 689; treaties pro- 
posed, 689; weapons development, 689 

Spanish Civil War: Soviet support for, 73, 422 

special departments (KGB), 775-76; criminal 
investigations, 775; duties of, 775; organi- 
zation of, 775; political surveillance by, 775, 
776; protecting state secrets, 776; under Sta- 
lin, 775 



1055 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Special Purpose Forces (Spetsnaz), 719-20, 
727; in Afghan war, 720; mission of, 720; 
number of, 720 

Speranskii, Mikhail, 28 

Spitak, 108 

sports organizations, 230 
Sputnik, 623, 689 

SRs. See Socialist Revolutionary Party 

Staar, Richard F., 664 

Stalin, Joseph V., 44, 55, 67, 74, 82, 85, 139, 
154, 183, 293, 295, 305, 342, 379, 385, 394, 
522, 756; Academy of Sciences under, 625; 
Anthem of the Soviet Union composed under, 340; 
assigned to post of general secretary, 65; body 
of, removed from Lenin Mausoleum, 84; cen- 
tralized planning under, 495; change of do- 
mestic policies by, in World War II, 75; 
Comecon under, 859; Comintern dissolved 
by, 414; compulsory labor under, 455; con- 
solidation of power of, lviii, 66, 68, 759; con- 
trol by, of Politburo, 299; control over science 
under, 633; cult of, 84, 88, 291, 295; death 
of, 81-82; denunciation of, by Khrushchev, 
760; education under, 249; education pro- 
grams established under, 243-44; elimination 
of NEP by, 68; environmental damage by, 
113; family, strengthening of, under, 235; 
First Five- Year Plan, 68-69, 487; five-year 
plans of, 492; forced collectivization under, 
lviii, 213, 473, 519, 593, 758; forced indus- 
trialization under, lviii; foreign policy under, 
72; Great Terror of, 392; health care pro- 
grams established under, 243- 44; industrial 
management system of, 485; instigation of 
Great Terror by, lviii; labor camps under, 
389; legacy of, 82; Lenin's dislike of, 65; Mar- 
shall Plan aid refused by, 474; military- 
political relations under, 729; nation defined 
by, 195; nationalities policy under, 243; op- 
position of, to Nazi Germany, 73; opposition 
of, to social democrats, 72; opposition of, to 
Trotsky, 65; original name of, 156; partial re- 
habilitation of, 762; patronage system built 
by, 314; political police under, 755; position 
of, in Bolshevik government, 60; power of, 
71; program of intensive construction under, 
68; purges by, 55, 56, 78, 84, 213, 382, 626, 
698, 759, 765; purges of party members by, 
lviii; religion under, 198-99, 200, 201; repres- 
sion justified by, 78; reverence accorded, 71; 
' 'revolution from above, "68; Red Army under, 
698; rise to power of, 66; Russification under, 
196; science and technology under, 625-27; 
security police under, 786; "socialism in one 
country" proposed by, 66; socialist realism 
implemented under, lviii, 369, 371, 372; and 
Soviet constitution, 332, 362; Soviet expan- 
sion into Eastern Europe by, 79; special 
departments under, 775; territorial claims 



against Turkey by, 430; titles appropriated by, 
291; war philosophy of, 658, 661; welfare pro- 
grams established under, 243-44; Yugoslavia 
expelled from Cominform by, 414, 424 
"Stalin Constitution" (of 1936), 333 
Stalingrad {see also Volgograd): Soviet victory 

at, in World War II, 75, 550, 699 
Stalin Prize, 214 

State Agro-Industrial Committee, 524 
State and Legal Department, 301, 769, 770, 
785 

State Bank, 35 

State Commission on the Electrification of Rus- 
sia, 547 

State Committee for Cinematography. See 
Goskino 

State Committee for Construction, 461; role of, 
in planning process, 461 

State Committee for Foreign Economic Rela- 
tions (GKES), 594, 600; functions of, 595, 
596 

State Committee for Foreign Tourism (In- 
turist), 409 

State Committee for Labor and Social Prob- 
lems, 275; role of, in planning process, 461 

State Committee for Material and Technical 
Supply: role of, in planning process, 461 

State Committee for Physical Culture and 
Sports, 230, 597 

State Committee for Publishing Houses, Print- 
ing Plants, and the Book Trade. See Gos- 
komizdat 

State Committee for Science and Technology 
(GKNT), 597, 737, 600, 629, 637; functions 
of, 595, 629-30, 632; military research and 
development under, 647; role of, in planning 
process, 461 

State Committee for Television and Radio 
Broadcasting (see Gostelradio) 

State Committee for the Protection of Nature. 
See Goskompriroda 

State Committee for the State of Emergency, 
lxxviii; decrees under, lxxviii-lxxix 

State Committee for the Supply of Production 
Equipment for Agriculture, 524 

State Committee for the Utilization of Atomic 
Energy, 376 

State Committee on Prices, 595 

State Council, lxxxi 

State Examination Committee, 259 

state farms (sovkhozy), lxii, 69, 118, 538; 
changes to, 521-22; conversion of collective 
farms to, 522; conversion of, to cooperatives, 
522; defined, 521; income of, 521; labor 
productivity of, 521; military, 720; output 
of, 521; planning reform in, 466-67; self- 
financing of, 522 

State Foreign Economic Commission, 595; role 
of, 597-99; upgrading of, 597 



1056 



Index 



State Planning Commission. See Gosplan 

State Police Department, 757 

State Political Directorate (GPU); formed, 758; 
powers of, 758, 758 

state secrets, censorship of, 374 

Statsionar satellite system, 585 

steppes, 104, 110; agriculture in, 527; cherno- 
zem soil of, 527; climate of, 527; described, 
107; irrigation in, 527 

Stockholm, 575 

Stolypin, Petr, 46, 48; assassination of, 47; 
peasant reform program of, 47 

Strategic Air Armies, 710-11; bombers of, 
710-11; mission of, 710; organization of, 710 

Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I), 
91-92, 415, 442, 443, 686-87 

Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT II), 
92, 416, 443 

strategic arms reductions, 690 

Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START), lx, 
417, 443, 687 

Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty: described, 
lx; signing of, lx 

Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), 671, 688; 
Soviet reaction to, 688, 689 

Strategic Rocket Forces, lxxvi, 661, 676, 697, 
703-5, 733; downgraded, 678; general or- 
ganization of, 703, 705; locations of, 705; 
mission of, 677, 703-5; as part of strategic 
nuclear forces, 678; purpose of, lxxvi; role 
of, 678, 703-5; uniforms and rank insignia 
of, 737-39; weapons of, 705 

strategy. See military strategy 

Stroganov family, 14, 486 

Submarine Forces, 716-18; incursions into 
Scandinavia, 423; intelligence-gathering by, 
716; kinds of vessels, 716-18; mission of, 
716; number of vessels, 716 

subtropical zone, agriculture in, 527 

succession, leadership, 288, 304; stages in strug- 
gle for, 305-06 

Sumgait, 202 

Supreme Court, 329, 330, 335, 359 
Supreme High Command (VGK), 677, 701, 

703, 719, 727 
Supreme Soviet, 195, 204, 272, 296, 304, 329, 
330, 333, 334, 335, 338, 339, 341, 345, 
350-58, 409, 670, 730, 765, 791-92; armed 
forces under, 700; authority of, 330, 350; 
authority of chairman of, 330; chairman of, 
334, 352-53; chambers of, 333; commissions 
and committees, 355-57; delegation of pow- 
ers by, 350; election to, 330; foreign policy 
responsibilities of, 408; function of, 350; and 
independence of republics, lxxi; legislative 
process in, 357-58; meetings of, 354; Minis- 
try of Defense and, 702; new, after coup of 
1991, lxxxi; new republics created by, 362; 
party controls, 358; party membership in, 



358; planning function of, 462; powers of 
chairman of, 334; Presidium of, 351-52; 
procedures in sessions of, 354; selection of 
delegates to, 358; sequence of events in ses- 
sions of, 354; sessions of, 354-55; Soviet of 
Nationalities, 353-54; Soviet of the Union, 
353-54; term of, 354 

Surakhany, 547 

Surgut, 502, 567 

Suslov, Mikhail A., 94, 95, 299 

Suvorov, Aleksandr, 28; science of victory, 654 

Suvorov military schools, 257, 748 

Suzdal' {see also Vladimir-Suzdal'), 8 

Sverdlovsk, 506 

Sverdlovsk Railroad, 557 

Sweden, 14, 15, 21, 28, 78, 141, 149; attack 
by Peter the Great on, 20; Estonia controlled 
by, 151; Soviet relations with, 422; war be- 
tween Russia and, 141 

Switzerland: as importer of Soviet gas, 508; 
Russian military campaign in, 28 

Synia, 558 

Syr Darya, 527, 529 

Syria, 91, 153, 432, 582, 712; privileged affili- 
ation of, with Comecon, 616; military ac- 
cess to, 727; Soviet arms bought by, 614, 
616, 779; Soviet trade with, 612, 614 

Syrian army, 91 

system of material balances, 461 



Tabaka, Maya, 397 

Tabasarans, 194 

Table of Ranks, 21, 212 

tactics. See military tactics 

Tactics (Reznichenko), 675 

Tadzhik Autonomous Republic, 162, 170 

Tadzhikistan, 362; Afghan conquest of, 169- 
70; Russian conquest of, 170 

Tadzhik language, 180 

Tadzhik Republic, 102, 121-22, 159, 160, 434; 
families in, 236; major cities of, 170; nation- 
alist movement in, 204; opposition to fam- 
ily planning in, 236; party apparatus in, 308 

Tadzhiks, lxvi, 160-61, 162, 169-71, 194; dis- 
tribution of, 170; etymology of, 169; griev- 
ances of, 204; in higher education, 170-71 ; 
history of, 169-70; language of, 170; as 
members of Central Committee, 171; as 
members of CPSU, 171, 324; Pamiri, 170; 
of the plain, 170; population of, 170; as scien- 
tific workers, 171; urbanization of, 170 

Taganka Theater, 394 

taiga zone, 104, 110, 526; agriculture in, 526; 
climate in, 526; described, 104-7, 526; for- 
estry and fur industries in, 526 

Taiwan, 86, 413 

Tallin, 152, 540 

Tamerlane, 155 



1057 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



tamizdat (underground literature published 
abroad), 389 

Tank Troops, 707; uniforms and rank insig- 
nia of, 738-39 

Tanzania, 438, 616 

Taraki, Nur Muhammad, 434 

Tartu, 152 

Tashauz, 172 

Tashkent, 162, 163, 427, 493, 578 

TASS, 345, 373; operations of, 375 

Tatar Autonomous Republic, 176, 177, 181 

Tatar lands, 18 

Tatar language, 166, 182 

Tatars, 20, 24, 152, 162, 168, 173, 174, 
175-77, 182; attempts to create independent 
state, 176; conversion of, to Islam, 192; dis- 
tribution of, 176-77; in higher education, 
177; history of, 175-76; languages of, 177; 
as members of Central Committee, 177; as 
members of CPSU, 177; as Muslims, 176, 
194; population of, 176; urbanization of, 177 

Tatars, Crimean, 175; attempt to establish in- 
dependent state, 176; conquered by Russia, 
175; emigration of, 176; exile of, during 
World War II, 176; national dissent move- 
ment of, 197; Russian repression of, 176 

Tatars, Siberian, 175; conquered by Russia, 
175; employment, 176; language, 177; popu- 
lation, 176 

Tatars, Volga, 175; attempt to establish in- 
dependent state, 176; conquered by Russia, 
175; conversion to Christianity, 175; lan- 
guage of, 177; revolts against Russian rul- 
ers, 175 

taxes: under Peter the Great, 22; to support eco- 
nomic plans, 469 

Taymyr Peninsula, 101 

Tbilisi, 156, 198, 497, 557, 561 

teachers, 226, 251 ; education level of, 261 ; elite, 
261; respect for, 260; salaries of, 217, 226, 
261; women as, 261 

teacher training, 260-61; focus of, 261; level 
of, 261 

technicums, 256 

technology (see also innovation): administration 
of, 628-33; for Comecon, 854, 863, 869; 
Comecon cooperation in, 869-70; commit- 
ment to, 623; directions of, 632; financing 
of, 632-33; high, 479, 608; implementation 
of plans for, 630; Khrushchev's reforms in, 
627; literature abstracts, 633; long-term goals 
and, 624, 632; mixed results of commitment 
to, 623-24; planning for, 629-32; policy 
making for, 628-29; problems of, 624; short- 
term goals and, 624; under Stalin, 643 

technology transfers: under Brezhnev, 643; by 
commercial sale, 643; by covert acquisition, 
644; under Gorbachev, 644; impact of, 645; 
by industrial cooperation, 643-44; industries 



using, 644-45; by intergovernmental agree- 
ment, 644; from Japan, 643; under Khru- 
shchev, 643; under Lenin, 642-43; means 
of, 643-44; to overcome backwardness, 642; 
problems with, 645; by scholarly exchange, 
644; from the United States, 643, 644, 645 

telecommunications systems, 586 

telegraph offices, 585 

telephone, 546; exchanges, 585; government 
eavesdropping, 585; system, 585-86; under- 
developed, 586 

telephones: number of, 586; requests for instal- 
lation of, 586 

television, 382-84, 546; audience, 382-83; cover- 
age, 383-84; growth of, 582; ideological 
themes of, 384; industry, 514; programs on, 
384; "Segodniavmire," 383; "Vremia," 383 

televisions, 499, 514 

Tenth Five- Year Plan (1976-80), 477-78, 532 

Tenth Party Congress, 64, 286, 293 

Tereshkova, Valentina, 351 

territorial administration, 361-66; administra- 
tive subdivisions, 361; district level, 364-65; 
of economy, 361; government, 363-64, 365; 
provincial level, 364-65; republic level, 
,362-64; of security, 361 

territorial expansion, origins of, 3 

testing facilities (scientific and technological): 
lack of, 639-40; organizational separation 
and, 638-39, 640 

textile industry, 22, 503, 514-15; in nineteenth- 
century Russia, 33; origins of, 486 

textiles, 615 

Thailand, 437 

Thatcher, Margaret, 422 

theater, 388, 393-94; avant-garde, 393-94; con- 
ventional, 393; liberalization of, 394; per- 
formers, 393 

theater of military operations (TVD), 669, 674, 
678, 727, 729, 730; combined arms strate- 
gic operation in, 676, 677; continental, 672; 
deep offensive operation in, 673; defined, 
672; oceanic, 672; strategic operation in, 
679-80 

thermonuclear fusion, 94 

thermonuclear plants, 510, 511, 512 

Third Chief Directorate (KGB), 733; respon- 
sibility of, 768, 775 

Third Five-Year Plan (1938-41), 69, 473-74 

Third Section, 30, 757 

Third World (see also under individual coun- 
tries), 585; agreements with, 413; arms trans- 
fers to, 890; characteristics of Soviet trade 
with, 612; Chinese attempt to influence, 90; 
deemphasis on Soviet influence in, 429; di- 
vision of, between China and Soviet Union, 
86; expansion of Soviet influence in, 90-91, 
404, 416; Khrushchev's categories of, 428- 
29; Soviet aid to, 431, 446; Soviet arms and 



1058 



Index 



military sales to, 612-13; Soviet conservative 
view of, 429; Soviet diplomacy in, 412; Soviet 
disagreements with, in United Nations, 445; 
Soviet influence in, 401, 407, 413, 429, 684, 
889-90; Soviet military interventions in, 684; 
Soviet military presence in, 684-85; Soviet ob- 
jectives in, 684; Soviet policy toward, 85-86, 
428, 441; Soviet pragmatist view of, 429; 
Soviet reorientation of relations in, under Gor- 
bachev, 438; Soviet support for, lx; Soviet 
trade with, lxiii, 591, 592, 612-18 

Thirteenth Five-Year Plan (1991-95), 470 

Tibet, 48 

Tien Shan Mountains, 108 
Tikhonov, Nikolai A., 316, 603 
Tilsit, Treaty of, 28 

Time of Troubles, 14-15, 17, 18; events in, 15; 
origins of, 14 

Time of Wishes, A (Raizman), 391-92 

Tinsulanonda, Prem, 437 

Tiraspol', 498 

Titarenko, Sergei M., 307 

Tithe Church (Kiev), 7 

Tito, Josip Broz, 80, 424 

Tkachev, Petr, 40, 43 

Tobol River, 182 

Tobol'sk, 502, 567 

Tolstaia, Tat'iana, 390 

Tolstoi, Aleksei, 389, 390 

Tolstoy, Lev, 39-40 

Tol'yatti, 122, 497 

Tomsk, 497, 503, 506, 567 

topography and drainage, 104-9, 105-6 

Toshiba scandal, 610 

Townes, Charles H., 623 

Trade, Ministry of, 597 

Trade Reform Act of 1974 (United States), 608 

trade unions: aim of, 228-29; membership, 
456; operation of, 228; quota for deputies 
to Congress of People's Deputies, 348; so- 
cialist competitions organized by, 228-29; 
system, 228; and workers' interests, 229 

trains: diesel-electric, 547-48, 554-56; electric, 
554-56; freight cars, 548, 556; inventory, 556; 
maximum axle loads, 556; maximum speeds, 
556; number of, 556; operating efficiency of, 
548; passenger capacity, 556; passenger opera- 
tions, 556-57; short-haul, 556; suburban, 556 

Transbaykal (Zabaykaliye), 557, 727 

Transcaucasian Federated Republic (1918), 
153-54 

Transcaucasian Soviet Federated Socialist Re- 
public (1922-36), 64, 154, 155, 333, 412 

Transcaucasus, 153, 514 

Transcaucasus Military District, 727 

transportation (see also transportation system), 
lxii, lxiii; automobiles, lxiii; party influence 
in, lxix; purpose of, lxiii; railroads, lxiii; 
trucks, lxiii 



transportation enterprises, 565 

transportation system: air, 546; automotive, 
545; density of, 545; disruptions of, in Soviet- 
Finnish War, 473; expansion of, 530; freight, 
565; local, 561; inadequacy of, 530; influ- 
ences on development of, 545; output of, as 
percentage of net material product, 453; pas- 
senger, 565-66, 570, 572, 545; water, 545-46 

Trans-Siberian Railway, 41, 42, 44, 124, 489, 
557, 558 

treaties, 412, 413-14; with Egypt, 684; mili- 
tary, 414; purposes of, 413; with Third 
World, 413 

Treaty of Mutual Assistance and Cooperation 
(Finnish-Soviet), 423 

Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear 
Weapons (1968), 91, 421 

Tret'iakov Gallery, 396 

Trifonov, Iurii, 94 

Triple Entente, 48, 50 

troika of Kamenev, Stalin, and Zinov'ev, 65-66 

Trotsky, Leon, 65, 67, 68, 180; as chairman 
of Petrograd Soviet, 59; as commissar of war, 
61, 698; exiled by Stalin, 66; jailed after 
"July Days," 59; Kronshtadt Rebellion put 
down by, 63; murder of, 70; position of, in 
Bolshevik government, 60; Red Army or- 
ganized by, 61; troika's opposition to, 65, 66 

trucks, 545, 561; failure of, factors contribut- 
ing to, 565; freight on, 561; importance of, 
to local transportation systems, 561 ; local and 
short hauls, 565; most important customers 
of, 565; use of, lxiii 

Trud (Labor); circulation of, 380; focus of, 380 

Truman Doctrine, 80 

Trushin, Vasilii P., 785 

Trust, 743-45 

"Trust in Cadres," 89 

trusts, 453 

tsars (see also under individual names), 4; end 

of rule of, 57; Ivan III as first, 12, 13 
Tsiolkovskii, Konstantin E., 625 
Tsushima Straits, 44 
Tsvigun, Semen, 762 
tuberculosis, 269 
Tukhachevskii, Mikhail N., 672 
Tula, 533 

tundra zone, 104, 526; agriculture in, 526; area 
of, 526; climate of, 526; described, 104, 526; 
employers in, 104; frost weathering in, 104; 
percentage of Soviet population in, 104; rein- 
deer herding in, 526; vegetation of, 104 

Turan Lowland, 104 

Turgenev, Ivan, 31, 39, 40 

Turkestan, 160, 161, 168, 176 

Turkestan Autonomous Republic, 162, 167, 
170; Soviet organization of, 162 

Turkestan Military District, 725, 727 

Turkestan-Siberian Railway, 547 



1059 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



Turkey, 28, 61, 80, 101, 153, 155, 157, 171, 
174, 423, 430-31; as importer of Soviet gas, 
508; Soviet economic assistance to, 431; 
Soviet territorial claims against, 430-31; 
Soviet trade with, 612, 613; United States 
arms embargo against, 431 

Turkic languages, 168, 182 

Turkic tribes, 156-57, 160, 176 

Turkish army, 158 

Turkmenia, 171, 172, 362 

Turkmenistan, 171, 362 

Turkmen lands, 38 

Turkmen Republic, 102, 121, 159, 160, 162, 
434, 527; gas reserves in, 507; infant mor- 
tality in, 1 16; life expectancy in, 116; major 
cities in, 172; nationalist movement in, 204; 
party apparatus in, 307, 308 

Turkmens, lxx, 160, 162, 166, 171-72; distri- 
bution of, 172; forced collectivization of, 172; 
grievances of, 204; in higher education, 172; 
history of, 171; as members of CPSU, 172, 
324; language of, 172; national resurgence 
of, 172; population of, 172; opposition of, 
to Russian rule, 171; Russian conquest of, 
171; as scientific workers, 172; urbanization 
of, 172; Uzbek conquest of, 171 

Tuvinians, 184 

Tver', 12 

Twelfth Five-Year Plan (1986-90), 478-82, 
492, 494, 515, 540-42; agricultural targets, 
541-42; computerization goals, 384-85; con- 
servation emphasized in, 541; consumer 
goods in, 502, 514; energy goals under, 511; 
first-year results of, 482-81; goals of, 495, 
496; increase in food prices in, 525; increase 
in preschool facilities in, 251 ; principal tasks 
of, 478; second-year results of, 482; targets 
for, 480-81, 540; technical progress in, 481; 
telecommunications goals, 384-85 

Twentieth Party Congress, 82-84, 295, 424, 
661; Khrushchev's "secret speech," 627, 761 

Twenty-Fifth Party Congress, 125, 440 

Twenty-First Party Congress, 84 

Twenty-Fourth Party Congress, 197 

Twenty-Second Party Congress, 84 

Twenty-Seventh Party Congress, 427, 444, 730; 
Chebrikov's KGB speech to, 764; Comecon 
as "socialist commonwealth," 423, 425; dele- 
gates to, 293; discussion of Warsaw Pact in, 
892; foreign policy goals, 402; Gorbachev's 
call for glasnost' and perestroika, 295, 451, 525, 
597; price reform under, 618; member turn- 
over at, 297; pronatalist policy, 125; technol- 
ogy policy, 492, 603; Third World relations, 
438; women elected at, 324 

Twenty-Sixth Party Congress, 125, 297, 427 

Twenty-Third Party Congress, 88 

Tynda, 558 

Tyuman oil fields, 505-6 



Tyumenskaya Oblast, 102 



U-2 shoot-down, 87 
Ufa, 182-83, 201, 502 

Ukraine, 5, 10, 12, 24, 25, 30, 42, 61, 145, 178; 
economic region, 503; partition of, 142; Soviet 
republic established in, 61; split between Mus- 
covy and Poland, 18, 141; western, incorpo- 
rated by Soviet Union in 1939, lviii, 200 

Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, 640, 641 

Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, 
188-89, 199; Soviet government's hostility 
toward, 189, 200; origins of, 188-89 

Ukrainian party organization: Khrushchev as 
head of, 82 

Ukrainian Republic, 5, 64, 74, 102, 107, 123, 
125, 138, 141, 145, 147, 154, 188, 307, 333, 
362, 412, 526, 527; agriculture in, 532-34; 
alcoholism in, 270; Catholics in, 199-200; es- 
tablishment of, 142; families in, 236; famine 
in, 196; forced collectivization of, 142; gas 
reserves in, 507; Helsinki watch group estab- 
lished in, 197; industry in, 486; irrigation 
projects in, 529; Jewish community in, 178, 
180; legal age for marriage in, 232; major 
cities in, 144; nationalities in, 146; nationalist 
demonstrations in, 202-4; nationalist move- 
ment suppressed in, 759; occupation of, by 
German army, 74-75, 142; party apparatus 
in, 308; population decline, 127; population 
density, 124; Roman Catholic community in, 
190. 204; Russification in, 204; starvation of 
peasants in, 69, 142; tree farms in, 475 

Ukrainians, 3, 5, 8, 24, 27, 36, 138, 141-44, 
164, 166, 168, 174; deportation of, by Na- 
zis, 76; discrimination against, 48, 142; dis- 
tribution of, 144; enserfed by Polish rulers, 
141 ; in higher education, 144; history of, 141 ; 
influence of, on Muscovy, 18-19; influence 
of Polish rule on, 141; language of, 35, 204; 
language of, prohibited, 35; as members of 
CPSU, 144, 324; as members of Central 
Committee, 144; national assertiveness by, 
141, 142, 202-4; oppression of, by Polish no- 
bility, 141; oppression of, by Russian govern- 
ment, 141-42; persecution of Catholic, 200; 
population of, 144; as scientific workers, 144; 
struggle of, for independence, 143, 144; ur- 
banization of, 144 

Ukrainization, 142 

Ulan-Ude, 493 

Ulbricht, Walter, 889 

Ulianov, Aleksandr, 41 

Ulianov, Vladimir (see also Lenin, Vladimir I.), 
41; exiled, 43; influence of Chernyshevskii 
on, 41 

underprovisioning, 221, 274, 277 
unemployment, 490 



1060 



Index 



Uniate Church, 190; suppression of, 30, 145 
Unified Electrical Power System, 511 
Unified Science and Technology Department, 
630 

union agreement of 1991, lxx; republics refus- 
ing to join, lxx 
Union of Brest, 190 

Union of Cinematographers, 390; Disputes 
Committee of, 390 

Union of Journalists, 378 

Union of Liberation, 45 

Union of Unions, 45-46 

Union of Writers, 370, 372, 382, 385, 774; con- 
servative views in, 389-90; Eighth Congress 
of, 389-90; liberal changes in, 389 

union republics (see also republics and under in- 
dividual republics): civil defense in, 721; de- 
fined, 102; desire of, for autonomy, lxx; 
determinants for status as, 102, 196; in- 
dependence declared by, lxx-lxxi; minority 
nationalities in, lxx; nationalities in, 135-36, 
137; proclamations of independence by, lxx, 
status as, lxvi 

union treaty, lxx-lxxi, lxxix 

United Arab Emirates, 432 

United Deep-Water Network, 568 

united front, 415, 429 

United Nations, 445-46; condemnation by, of 
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, 434, 445; 
condemnation by, of Vietnamese occupation 
of Cambodia, 445; Gorbachev's arms reduc- 
tions announcement in, 444; involvement of, 
in Korean War, 81, 445; permanent mem- 
bers, 445; Soviet boycott of, 445; Soviet 
financial contributions to, 446; Soviet role 
in establishing, 445; United States contribu- 
tions withheld from, 446; voting in, 413, 445 
United Socialist Revolutionary Party, 43 
United States, 45, 56, 121, 433, 435, 439, 457, 
497, 526, 539, 548, 561, 562, 671; agricul- 
tural exports to Soviet Union, 608; Army, 
strategy of, 680; assistance of, to Soviet 
Union in World War II, 75, 550; and Cold 
War, 79; debt payments to, 606; destruction 
of targets in, 677; diplomatic recognition by, 
of Soviet Union, 412; diplomatic recognition 
withheld from Soviet Union, 67; diplomatic 
support of, for Iran, 79; emigration to, lxxiv; 
establishing relations with Japan, 37; in- 
fluence of, in Middle East, 430, 432; involve- 
ment of, in Korean War, 81; involvement 
of, in Civil War (Russia's), 61; Limited Test 
Ban Treaty signed by, 87, 688; Marxist- 
Leninist view of, 655; as member of United 
Nations, 445-46; nuclear parity of, with 
Soviet Union, 401, 681, 699; nuclear weap- 
ons of, 691; recognition by, of independence 
of Baltic states, lxxxi; relations of, with 
Egypt, 91; relations of, with Soviet Union, 



91-92, 401; role of, in putting down Boxer 
Rebellion, 44; Russian relations with, 36; 
Soviet support from, in World War II, 
76-77; Soviet attempts to limit influence of, 
441; Soviet Buying Commission in, 593; 
Soviet trade with, lxiii, 605, 607-9; START 
talks, 687; technology transfers from, 645; 
trade boycott of Soviet Union by, 601 , 609; 
trade policy of, 608; as world power, 32 
universities, lxiv-lxv; competition for entrance 
to, 258; enrollment, 258; graduate training 
in, 260; mission of, 258; restricted under 
Alexander II, 35 
Unkiar-Skelessi, Treaty of, 32 
Ural-Kuznetsk industrial complex, 547 
Ural Mountains, 33, 45, 99, 101, 104, 107, 
124, 139, 487, 550, 581, 705, 721; coal 
reserves in, 508; forestry in, 538; location 
of industry in, 488, 490, 493, 497, 501, 503; 
metal industry in, 502; natural resources in, 
112-13, 506; railroads in, 553 
Ural River, 182 
uranium, 510 

urbanization, 121-22, 125, 127, 130, 224; and 
control over migration, 122; distribution of, 
among regions and nationalities, 121-22; 
and gender roles, 230; rates of, 121-22; of 
rural life, 224 

urban society: culture, 224; economy, 224; 
housing conditions, 224; and rural society, 
differences between, 224-25; state retail out- 
lets in, 456; travel, 225; workers with peasant 
backgrounds in, 227 

Urengoy, 502, 558; gas reserves in, 507, 581 

Urengoy-Uzhgorod pipeline, 609, 610; foreign 
technology acquired for, 644-45 

Urengoy- Yamburg rail line, 558 

Uruguay, 441 

Usinsk, 558 

uskorenie (acceleration), 597 
Ussuri River, 37, 90, 426, 723 
Ust'-Ilimsk, 511 
Ust'-Kut, 558 
Uvarov, Sergei, 30 
Uygurs, 194 
Uzbekistan, 362 
Uzbek Khan, 160 

Uzbek Republic, 102, 121, 159, 160, 162, 166, 
170, 177, 362, 434, 527; agriculture in, 534; 
cities in, 163; cotton grown in, 532; fami- 
lies in, 238; gas reserves in, 507; infant mor- 
tality in, 116; nationalities in, 168; party 
apparatus in, 308; population of, 162; op- 
position to family planning in, 236 

Uzbeks, lxvi, 168, 170; alphabet of, 163; an- 
cient history of, 160; conquest by, of Turk- 
mens, 171; distribution of, 162; divorce of, 
233; in higher education, 163; language of, 
163, 166; medieval history of, 160-61; as 



1061 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



members of the Central Committee, 163; as 
members of CPSU, 163; modern history of, 
161-62; as Muslims, 194; population of, 162; 
as scientific workers, 163; urbanization of, 
163 

Uzhgorod, 581 



Vanino, 575 

Varangians, 138; described, 5; Oleg, 5; role 
of, in establishing Kievan Rus', 5-6; Rurik, 
5 

Varna, 575 

Vasilii HI, 12 

veche (popular assembly), 8 

Vecheka, 60, 547; abolished, 758; described, 

755; growth of, 757-58 
Venezuela, 440 
Ventspils, 580 
Verdun, 49 

Verkhnyaya Pyshma, 506 
Verkhoyansk Range, 107 
Vernyy, 108 
Veterinary Troops, 739 

victory, 692; combined arms for, 677; objec- 
tive, 659; and weapons, relationship be- 
tween, 659 

video cassette recorders, 384, 385, 499 

Vienna, 592 

Vietnam, 90, 407, 414, 423, 426, 427, 430, 433, 
440, 612; as burden on Comecon, 871; 
Chinese incursion into, 426; Comecon aid 
to, 871; labor transfers from, 870; as mem- 
ber of Comecon, 601, 603, 854, 871; mili- 
tary access to, 727-28; Soviet and East 
European military advisers in, 684; occupa- 
tion by, of Cambodia, 437; power of, in 
Comecon, 871; satellite communications 
hookup to, 582; Soviet economic aid to, 591, 
592, 605; Soviet economic relations with, 
612; Soviet military bases in, 603, 685; 
Soviet support for, lx; Soviet ties with, 437; 
war, 91 , 404, 571 ; withdrawal of troops from 
Cambodia, 604 

village, defined, 224 

Vilnius, 147, 148 

Vinnitsa district, 311 

virgin land campaign, 87, 303, 475, 522 

Vladimir (see also Vladimir-Suzdal'), 8, 9, 186, 
497, 585 

Vladimir (Prince): accomplishments of, 7; 
Christianization of Kievan Rus' under, 7, 
186 

Vladimir-Suzdal', 8, 9, 10, 12 

Vladivostok, 122, 540, 727; building of Rus- 
sian naval base at, 37; Gorbachev's speech 
in, 435, 728 

Vlasov, Aleksandr V., 763, 783 

Vneshniaia torgovlia (Foreign Trade), 600 



Vneshtorgbank, 611 
vocational-technical schools, 256 
vodka, 93 

voenkomat (military commissariat), 743, 746, 750 

Voennaia mysV (Military Thought), 670 

Voice of America, 382 

Voinovich, Vladimir, lxxii 

Volga automotive plant, 497-98 

Volga-Don canal, 567 

Volga Economic Region, 502 

Volga-Kama waterways, 569 

Volga River, 5, 8, 9, 14, 18, 108, 122, 124, 

181, 182, 183, 567, 568, 581; hydroelectric 

system on, 108 
Volga River Valley, 18, 113, 475, 527, 699 
Volga-Ural region, 175, 176, 581; gas reserves 

in, 507; oil fields in, 505 
Volgograd (see also Stalingrad), 75, 124, 497, 

506 

Volhynia, 141 

Volkogonov, Dmitrii A., 659, 663 
Vologda, 124 

Voluntary Society for Assistance to the Army, 
Air Force, and Navy (DOSAAF), 730; or- 
ganization of, 742; premilitary training by, 
739; specialist training in, 742 

Vorkuta, 558 

Voronezh, 497 

Voroshilov General Staff Academy, 749 
Voslensky, Michael, 315 
vospitanie (upbringing), 245 
voting, 333; as duty, 348; for deputies in Con- 
gress of People's Deputies, 347, 348 
Voznesenskii, Andrei, 388, 389, 390 
"Vremia," 383; audience, 383; format, 383 
VUZy. See education, higher 
Vyborg, 506 

Vysotskii, Vladimir, 94, 393-94; grave of, 395 

wages: effect of reform on, 470-71; egalitari- 
an, 470; minimum, 470, 471; as tool of eco- 
nomic control, 470 

war (see also nuclear war): arms control to avoid, 
686, 691; avoidability of, 654, 661; combined 
arms offensive in, 671, 675, 676; as continu- 
ation of politics, lxxvi, 654, 655-57, 667; 
fought with conventional weapons, 663, 671, 
673; guidelines for categorizing, 655; inevita- 
bility of, 653, 661; just, 655, 657; Marxist- 
Leninist theory of, 654-59; mobilization for, 
750; of national liberation, 681, 780; as out- 
come of class struggle, 655; unjust, 655; 
world, doctrine of fighting, 661, 681 

war, laws of, 657-69, 668; combat power, 668; 
with conventional weapons, 668; defined, 
657; dependence of the forms of war on peo- 
ple and equipment, 668; Marxism-Leninism 
as basis for discovering, 657; mutability of, 



1062 



Index 



657, 668; with nuclear weapons, 668; objec- 
tive victory, 658-59; permanently operating 
factors in, 658; as political philosophy of 
CPSU, 657; and principles of military art, 
666; reordering of, 658; Savkin's, 658 

War and Peace (Tolstoy), 40 

war communism, 68, 472; defined, 63; econ- 
omy under, 63; and Kronshtadt Rebellion, 
63, 64; results of, 63 

War Industries Committee, 50, 51 

Warsaw, Grand Duchy of, 28 

Warsaw Pact, 90, 424, 444, 510, 608, 693, 714, 
727, 749, 875-92; arms reductions by, 663, 
692; arms transfers by, 890; cohesion in, 

881- 82, 888-91; Committee of Ministers of 
Defense, 886; as counterweight to NATO, 
875, 878; cuts by, in military budget, 445; 
in deep offensive operation, 680, 888; 
defense-oriented military doctrine of, 663, 
892; defined, 86; detente and, 888-91; dis- 
solution of, lx; East European participation 
in, 875; and end of detente, 891; formation 
of, 860, 878-80; function of, 875; under Gor- 
bachev, 892; invasion of Czechoslovakia by, 
425, 442, 882-83; Joint Command of, 879, 
886; Joint Staff of, 886-87; under Khru- 
shchev, 879-80, 881-82; leadership of, 886; 
as legitimation of status quo, 888-89; meet- 
ings of, 885, 886; members of, 423, 692, 876; 
Military Council, 886; military exercises of, 

882- 83, 889, 890; military organization of, 
882, 885-87; Military Scientific- Technical 
Council, 887; military tasks of, 885; and 
Ministry of Defense, 702; NATO as threat 
to, 891; policy coordination in, 888; politi- 
cal Consultative Committee of, 879, 884-85; 
problems in, 875; relations of, with NATO, 
403, 419; Soviet control of, 885-86; 887; and 
Soviet military strategy, 885, 887-88; Soviet 
reevaluation of, after 1956 revolutions, 
881-82, 888; Technical Committee, 887; as 
tool in East-West diplomacy, 879; treaty es- 
tablishing, 879; structural changes in, 886 

Warsaw Television Plant, 514 

Washington Summit: of 1987, 418, 419; of 
1990, lx 

Watergate scandal, 404 

water resources, 108-9; inland bodies, 109 

weapons, 339; antisatellite (ASAT), 688-89; 
buildup of conventional, 692; conventional, 
improved, 675; customers for, 614, 618; de- 
velopment programs, 666; export of, 613-14, 
615; limited by treaty, 686; nuclear, biolog- 
ical, and chemical (NBC), 709-10; preposi- 
tioning of, 685; Soviet strategic, 687; 
transfers, 410; United States strategic, 687; 
and victory, relationship between, 659 

Wehrmacht, 699 

welding technology, 623 



welfare programs: family subsidies, 276-77; 
under Khrushchev, 243-44; maternity ben- 
efits, 276; pension system, 274-75; under 
Stalin, 243-44; total-care facilities, 275; types 
of, 243; workers' compensation, 276 

Western culture, lxvii; defined, 4; influence of, 
on Russian culture, 4, 19; progress of mod- 
ernization in, 4 

Western Europe, 121, 581, 664, 781; fuel ex- 
ports to, 606, 612; grain imports from, 608; 
KGB-sponsored terrorism in, 779; missiles 
aimed at, 705; Soviet relations with, 401; 
Soviet trade with, 609-10; trade boycott of 
Soviet Union by, 601; war scenario in, 680 

Western Front (World War I), 49 

Westernization: under Alexander I, 29; under 
Catherine II, 25, 26; under Elizabeth I, 23; 
Peter the Great's drive for, 22 

Westernizers, 30 

Western technology, lvii, 623; imports of, 592; 
interest of tsars in, 19; military, 36; Soviet 
import of, lxiii 

West Germany. See Federal Republic of Ger- 
many 

West Siberia Economic Region, 502, 503 
West Siberian Plain, 104 
West Slavs, 138, 146 
West Turkic-Kipchak languages, 177 
What Is to Be Done? (Chernyshevskii), 40 
What Is to Be Done? (Lenin), 43, 283 
White armies, 142, 167, 171, 176; defeat of, 
62-63; professional officers in, 698; rights 
of, denied under constitution, 332; supported 
by Allied Powers, 61 
White Sea, 10, 567 
Wilhelm II (Kaiser), 38 
Winter War. See Soviet- Finnish War 
Witte, Sergei, 46, 47, 48; dismissal of, 42, 46; 
economic programs of, 41; and evacuation 
of Manchuria, 44; results of policies of, 42; 
Russo-Chinese Bank established by, 44 
women, 391-92; as agricultural workers, lxii, 
217; in armed forces, 747-48; burdens of, 
lxvi; child care by, 265; death following abor- 
tion or childbirth, 271 ; equal rights of, lxvi, 
212, 230-31; health care of, 266; in the labor 
force, 477; in higher education, 258; low sta- 
tus of, 231; maternity benefits for, 234, 243, 
276; maternity leave for, lxvi, 130, 231, 276; 
medals and payments to mothers with large 
families, 235, 236; medical care of, 231; 
medical education of, 35; as members of 
Central Committee, 324; as members of 
CPSU, 231, 322, 324; occupations of, 212, 
221, 231; percentage of, in work force, 119, 
120; as physicians, 221, 268; protection of, 
in workplace, 231; reasons of, for not join- 
ing party, 324; salaries of, 221, 231; social 



1063 



Soviet Union: A Country Study 



status of, 212; status of, lxvi; subsidies to, 
with more than two children, 276; surplus 
of, 119; as teachers, 261; time spent on 
housework by, 232 

wood industries, 514-15, 539, 611 

workers, 48, 51, 214; blue-collar, lxv, 211; 
motivation of, 479; number of, 454; pay of, 
lxv; productivity of, 479; white-collar, lxv 

workers, agricultural: children of, in higher 
education, 258; defined, 217; as party mem- 
bers, 217, 323; as percentage of population, 
217; position of children of, 211; wages and 
benefits of, 217, 220 

workers, white-collar, 211, 216-17; children of, 
in higher education, 258; income of, 216, 
220; as members of CPSU, 216, 323; num- 
ber of, 216; position of children of, 211; 
privileges of, 216; in rural areas, 226 

Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, 698 

workers' compensation: maternity leave, 276; 
sick leave, 276 

workers' insurance organizations, 47 

work force: distribution of, 455-56, 485, 490; 
health care to guarantee, 262-63; laxness of, 
479; and perestroika, 490-91; redistribution 
of, 489-90; shift in nature of, 490 

working-age population, 454 

working class, 42, 48, 331 

World Bank, 619 

World Peace Council, 407, 779 

world revolution, 412, 681 

world socialist system, lxxvi, 401, 414, 683, 697; 
and Comecon, 857; and Soviet political in- 
fluence, 684; Soviet Union as leader of, 878 

World War I, 4, 61, 147, 179, 472; Bolshevik 
refusal to pay debts from, 593; disengage- 
ment by Soviet government from, 60; im- 
pact of, on Russia, 56-57; initial phase of, 
49, 50; land ceded by Russia in, 61; Rus- 
sia's offensives in, 49; Russian casualties in, 
50; strains of, 50-51 

World War II, 82, 101, 139, 145, 150, 183, 
200, 290, 291, 342, 401, 415, 421, 422, 424, 
474, 475, 494, 571, 572, 580, 610, 626, 659, 
661, 699, 733, 875, 877; Allied assistance in, 
to Soviet Union, 75, 77; automotive produc- 
tion during, 562; automotive transportation 
during, 562; beginning of, 73; church used 
in, to arouse patriotism, 198-99; Crimean 
Tatars exiled during, 176; depletion of male 
population in, 226; deportation of national- 
ities during, 196; diplomatic recognition of 
Soviet Union during, 412; domestic policies 
changed to increase support for, 75, 198-99; 
early Soviet losses in, 74; effect of, on popu- 
lation, 118-19; effect of Stalin's purges on 
success in, 84, 699, 759; friction among Al- 
lies in, 77; German victories in, 75; inland 
navigation in, 566-67; Internal Troops in, 



794; maritime fleet in, 566-67; military po- 
litical relations after, 729; patriotic films on, 
384; recovery from, 451; Red Army in, lviii; 
role of Internal Troops in, 723; role of rail- 
road in, 550-52; science and technology dur- 
ing, 626-27; Soviet deaths in, lviii, 77, 699; 
Soviet civil aviation in, 577; Soviet lack of 
preparation for, 74; Soviet material losses in, 
77-78; Soviet strategy in, 672; Soviet trade 
during, 593; Soviet victory at Stalingrad, 75; 
Soviet victory in, 75; use of German tech- 
nology during, 643; trade boycott of Soviet 
Union after, 601; and transfer of industry 
to Asian part of Soviet Union, 487, 490 

Yakut Autonomous Republic, 529 
Yakut Basin, 509 
Yakutiya, 558, 567, 611 
Yakuts, 184 
Yakutsk, 110, 112 
Yalta Conference, 77 
Yamal Peninsula, 507, 558 
Yamburg, 507, 558 
Yanov, Alexander, 310 
Yaroslavl', 12 

Yeltsin, Boris N. : action by, after coup of 1991 , 
lxxx; career of, lxviii; opposition by, to coup, 
lxxix; ouster of, as Moscow party chief, 764- 
65; political agenda of, lxviii; popularity of, 
lxviii; resignation by, from CPSU, lxviii 

Yemen Arab Republic (North Yemen), 432; 
Soviet arms bought by, 614 

Yenisey River, 18, 104, 109, 122, 167, 526, 567 

Yerevan, 115, 154, 202 

Yiddish, 180, 201 

Young Octobrists, 229, 230, 246 

Young Turks, 157 

youth organizations: activities of, 246; descrip- 
tion of, 229-30; Komsomol, 229, 230, 246; 
Pioneers, 229, 230, 246; purpose of, 246; 
Young Octobrists, 229, 230, 246 

Yugoslavia, 80, 86, 407, 414, 424, 878, 884; 
Soviet trade with, 591, 603-4; ties to Come- 
con, 603, 855 

Zalygin, Sergei, 388 
Zambia, 438 

zampolit (deputy commander for political af- 
fairs), 748, 877; power of, 733; responsibil- 
ities of, 731-32 

Zankov, Leonid V., 249 

Zaporozhye, 497, 501 

Za rubezhom (Abroad), 381 

zemskii sobor (national assembly), 15 

zemstvos, 34, 35, 36, 45, 46, 50 

Zeravshan River, 527 

zero option, 416-17 

Zeya River Valley, 529 



1064 



Index 



Zhdanov, 501 
Zhdanov, Andrei, 78, 81 
Zhdanovshchina, 78 
Zheng Toubin, 604 
Zhilin, Pavel A., 617 
Zhivkov, Todor, 892 



Zhukov (Marshal), 82, 84 
Zimbabwe, 438, 616 

Zinov'ev, Grigorii V., 65, 66, 180; accused of 

murdering Kirov, 70; in show trials, 70 
Zionism, 201 
Zukov, Georgii K., 729 



1065 



Published Country Studies 



(Area Handbook Series) 



550-65 


Afghanistan 


550-87 


Greece 


550-98 


Albania 


550-78 


Guatemala 


550-44 


Algeria 


550-174 


Guinea 


550-59 


Angola 


550-82 


Guyana and Belize 


550-73 


Argentina 


550-151 


Honduras 


550-169 


Australia 


550-165 


Hungary 


550-176 


Austria 


550-21 


India 


550-175 


Bangladesh 


550-154 


Indian Ocean 


550-170 


Belgium 


550-39 


Indonesia 


550-66 


Bolivia 


550-68 


Iran 


550-20 


Brazil 


550-31 


Iraq 


550-168 


Bulgaria 


550-25 


Israel 


550-61 


Burma 


550-182 


Italy 


550-50 


Cambodia 


550-30 


Japan 


550-166 


Cameroon 


550-34 


Jordan 


550-159 


Chad 


550-56 


Kenya 


550-77 


Chile 


550-81 


Korea, North 


550-60 


China 


550-41 


Korea, South 


550-26 


Colombia 


550-58 


Laos 


550-33 


Commonwealth Caribbean, 


550-24 


Lebanon 




Islands of the 






550-91 


Congo 


550-38 


Liberia 


550-90 


Costa Rica 


550-85 


Libya 


550-69 


Cote d Ivoire (Ivory Coast) 


550-172 


Malawi 


550-152 


Cuba 


550-45 


Malaysia 


550-22 


Cyprus 


550-161 


Mauritania 


550-158 


Czechoslovakia 


550-79 


Mexico 


550-36 


Dominican Republic and 


550-76 


Mongolia 




Haiti 






550-52 


Ecuador 


550-49 


Morocco 


550-43 


Egypt 


550-64 


Mozambique 


550-150 


El Salvador 


550-35 


Nepal and Bhutan 


550-28 


Ethiopia 


550-88 


Nicaragua 


550-167 


Finland 


550-157 


Nigeria 


550-155 


Germany, East 


550-94 


Oceania 


550-173 


Germany, Fed. Rep. of 


550-48 


Pakistan 


550-153 


Ghana 


550-46 


Panama 



T 



1067 



550-156 


Paraguay 


550-53 


Thailand 


550-185 


Persian Gulf States 


550-89 


Tunisia 


550-42 


Peru 


550-80 


Turkey 


550-72 


Philippines 


550-74 


Uganda 


550-162 


Poland 


550-97 


Uruguay 


550-181 


Portugal 


550-71 


Venezuela 


550-160 


Romania 


550-32 


Vietnam 


550-37 


Rwanda and Burundi 


550-183 


Yemens, The 


550-51 


Saudi Arabia 


550-99 


Yugoslavia 


550-70 


Senegal 


550-67 


Zaire 


550-180 


Sierra Leone 


550-75 


Zambia 


550-184 


Singapore 


550-171 


Zimbabwe 


550-86 


Somalia 






550-93 


South Africa 






550-95 


Soviet Union 






550-179 


Spain 






550-96 


Sri Lanka 






550-27 


Sudan 






550-47 


Syria 






550-62 


Tanzania 







1068 



PIN: 006946-000 



